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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (8 March) . . Page.. 688 ..
MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):
want the contracts, and they would take the contracts and nothing else and say, "We will buy this from you, but we don't actually want the staff. You can leave the staff to yourself". That would leave us in the position, Mr Speaker, of what to do with those staff. Would the staff be let go, or would they be reabsorbed into the rest of ACTEW, which, of course, then would have a greater staff level for its particular activities. It would be burdened by having staff in excess of its requirements and therefore would increase its risk and its exposure to adverse levels of competition.
So, Mr Speaker, the principal asset is the customer contracts, and if Mr Hargreaves and the Opposition wish to sell those, well, that is fine. They can put that forward if they wish, but my view is that we are better off keeping those contracts for ourselves and putting them into a productive way of generating further profits for the people of the ACT.
MR HARGREAVES: I have a supplementary question. I thank the Minister for letting us know what the assets are. Will the Treasurer concede that the retail arm can be desegregated from the remainder of ACTEW without inordinate difficulty, far less difficulty in fact than will be involved in the process of setting the proposed merger in place, simply because it does not have significant physical assets?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, no, I would not concede that it would be easy to desegregate the retail arm of ACTEW electricity at all. In fact, there are a large number of difficult issues to consider in that process and I will run through some of those difficult issues. First of all, the question that needs to be asked is this: Would we get out of all electricity retailing or just sell the bit that is contestable at this time, ie, the major contracts that we have with certain corporate clients, and would we leave the domestic customers until later on or would we put them in the basket as well? That is an interesting question. I do not know the answer to it.
The second question is would we get rid of the electricity billing system and the meter reading functions despite the fact that we need those functions to be able to service our water and sewerage customers. Now, how do you do that? If you are not going out to read the meters of your electricity customers anymore, how do you read the meters of people for the purposes of water consumption? Do you have to have a separate work force, with one person going in to read your meter for water and another person to read your meter for electricity?
Mr Quinlan: What happens now?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, we contract out these functions at the present time, and they can be organised sensibly on that basis.
Mr Quinlan: Uncharted waters again, Gary.
MR HUMPHRIES
: Mr Speaker, that question needs to be asked as well. The third question is will we cease to buy any electricity direct from the generators despite the fact that ACTEW itself is one of the largest users of electricity in the ACT? Things like the Lower Molonglo Water Quality Control Centre and Googong Dam use large amounts of electricity. Would we still be a purchaser in the current situation? The fourth question is:
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