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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (8 March) . . Page.. 678 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

By structuring even the water and sewerage assets in the context of that joint venture, there is still the issue of giving ACTEW a brighter outlook as a result across the board. It is not true to say that the water and sewerage sector is immune from competition and immune from being changed. As Mr Mackay pointed out in the answer that I think Mr Quinlan refers to, there are a number of cases in the ACT where people have separated from the ACTEW sewerage system using technology which will allow them to recycle their waste products and re-use them. Any householder who sits and contemplates the idea of water going from their tap down the hole of their sink appreciates that a very large amount of water each day is disposed of by householders which is actually quite useable relatively clean water. It could, for example, be used on their gardens, and it is not presently being used in that way. With the CRANOS project, for example, we have a way of being able to work on the idea of reticulating this grey water out for other uses rather than it going down into the sewerage system or going into the waste water system, but we do not have that operating on a house by house basis.

Mr Speaker, technology is changing all the time. Thirty years ago, if you said to people that you can generate your own electricity in your own home by putting a panel on your roof which catches the rays of the sun, they would laugh and think you were bloody silly, but today you can. It will be the case in the future that people will be able to separate water even from the territory-wide sewerage and water systems if, to some degree at least, technology advances to a greater stage and the technology is affordable. When those things happen, Mr Speaker, potentially even the water and sewerage arms of ACTEW will be at some risk because of change, not so much because of competition from other suppliers of those services but from competition from new technology.

If ACTEW is the little island that the Opposition wants it to be - you know, I am a rock; I put my hands over my head, keep my head down and everything will be okay - it has not got the technological base, it has not got the research and development base, and it has not got the customer base to be able to trial new ways of meeting its market. I think ACTEW should have those things. I want ACTEW to have those things because I want ACTEW to be able to grow.

There are two courses of action open to the Assembly, Mr Speaker, in respect of this matter. We can look at the elements of ACTEW which are at risk, particularly serious immediate risk, and we can cut those things off and put them out to the marketplace and hope that nothing else gets to be seriously at risk, or we can take the ACTEW business and put it into that marketplace and make it competitive in that marketplace through strategic alliances with other successful major Australian firms in a similar line of business. We have chosen the latter course of action, Mr Speaker, and I have to say I think the case for the former course of action, the case the Opposition has made out, is very weak indeed.

Mr QUINLAN: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. In relation to technology, given that ACTEW, in public hands, has managed to keep abreast with technology for the best part of 30 years, and has often led the nation in relation to, say, 132kv sub-transmission around town, the construction of the Lower Molonglo Water Control Centre, CRANOS, et cetera - - -

Ms Carnell: When the Federal Government was paying.

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