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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (2 February) . . Page.. 72 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

I waited with great expectation, and some apprehension, for the day when the Chief Minister raised the issue in public and forced me to decide whether the silver should be kept or sold. I expected that decision day to be before the last election. Surely, I thought, the Liberal Party that was planning such a major sale would have the honesty to include its plans in the policies it put to the people. I was so surprised when the Liberal Party policy documents came and went with nary a mention of ACTEW by the Chief Minister. It was, in fact, I who informed the electorate at the time of the likelihood of ACTEW being put up for sale. Given all the Chief Minister has said over the past six months about the urgent need for the ACTEW sale, I was surprised indeed when, in the closing days of last year's election campaign, she flatly denied that the sale of ACTEW was on her agenda.

The big question in my mind was: Is she misleading the voters of Canberra? What I missed, of course, in those pre-election days was a qualification in the Chief Minister's denial. While the sale of ACTEW was not on her agenda, she promised to do what was necessary to preserve the value of the asset. Well, we now know what preserving the value of an asset really means. They were the weasel words of a politician determined to hide the truth. The family silver was up for sale back in February last year, but Mrs Carnell did not want the children here in the ACT to know before the deed was done.

There has been a lot of that "mummy knows best" attitude in the approach the Chief Minister has taken since then to this ACTEW sale. She knew that the Canberra family wanted to keep its asset rather than sell it. She knew that reports by two merchant banks had not convinced them otherwise, but she still thought that she knew what was good for them and good for all of us; hence the attempt in December to get this Assembly to immediately pass the legislation that is still before us today. The Chief Minister wanted to take no nonsense at all from these troublesome children here in the Assembly. We were told that, if the nasty medicine was not taken then and there, the children could suffer forevermore. Urgent action to allow the sale was necessary and Assembly members were threatened that the legislation would be withdrawn immediately if there was a reference of some of the issues to an Assembly committee. That turned out to be an idle threat.

When the Chief Minister's bluff was called and the committee into unfunded superannuation was established, the legislation, surprisingly, was not withdrawn. But believe you me, you naughty members, you will be brought back to school early in February and will have to take your medicine on 2 February or else. Or else the sale of ACTEW really will be off the agenda and you will be punished with something absolutely unpleasant in the next budget. But, lo and behold, when the Assembly committee dares to question whether the sale of ACTEW really is the only way to deal with the problem of unfunded superannuation, we have the Chief Minister suggesting that the question should be deferred again. We should be given the chance to think again about whether we really want to be responsible for a horror budget. Well, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not in the mood to continue being hectored by the Chief Minister. The matriarch of the Government has cried wolf once too often for me.

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