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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3832 ..

Ms Carnell: Tell us what is the right way.

MR QUINLAN: We are here to help. A sweetener in the AGL deal is the possible construction of one or more gas turbine electricity generation stations. Was this proposition part of an original expression of interest, or is it a further departure from a pseudo tender process? If you could, you might advise of any significant change that has occurred since gas generation of electricity was last evaluated and rejected as uneconomic. We trust that it is not just a bit of chicanery to help gain support for the merger, and the cash bonanza that might follow, and that there is genuine commitment to the construction of that generation station or those generation stations.

MS CARNELL: That was a very long supplementary of many parts.

Mr Quinlan: I got away with it, though.

MS CARNELL: You did get away with it; that is true. First and foremost, with regard to the comments about us assessing the 29 proposals with Great Southern, there was not much point in that after the New South Wales Government pulled out. We could have done the assessment and decided that GSE was the best, but we could not go ahead, so we would have had to look back to the 29. We decided that that would not be a very positive way to go, so the board of ACTEW had a look at the 29 proposals and came forward with the AGL proposal.

It is my understanding that it was not in a pseudo tender approach, but in an expression of interest approach, which is very different from a tender. A tender document is something that has in-depth figures and all of the details. An expression of interest, as members will know, is a much broader based approach to expressing interest along particular broad guidelines. It is my understanding that a gas-fired power station was part of that initial expression of interest. It is certainly something that AGL is very interested in doing.

What has changed between this time and last time? I would have to say a whole electricity and gas market and also a pipeline coming in fairly close to the ACT. A whole raft of things have changed quite fundamentally in the marketplace. You have only to look at the $1.6 billion that electricity retailers in Queensland and New South Wales have lost over the last two years to see that this market is incredibly volatile. Add to that the fact that 400,000 consumers were without electricity in South Australia just last week and you can see that this industry is one that we have to ensure we get right.

Mr Berry: Ours has not. We still own it; that is why.

MS CARNELL: Mr Berry interjects. In Labor Queensland, one of the state-run electricity distributors has lost $575m in the last six months. In fact, all of the government equity in that particular entity was lost in a very short period of time. Mr Speaker, that is the sort of risk that this market brings.

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