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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 763 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you. The article continues:

Mr Speaker, the new combined energy giant based, I think, in Queensland, will have a customer base of 10 million. Where do you think tiny little 100,000 customer-based ACTEW fits in that kind of scheme, Mr Speaker? It is a babe in the woods; it is a tiny, tiny gnat compared with elephants, Mr Speaker, in that kind of market.

The other headlines tell the same story: "Four majors in energy joint venture", "Pulse feels a powerful shake-out". This is not disaggregation, Mr Quinlan, it is the opposite of that.

Mr Quinlan: It is vertical disaggregation, Mr Humphries.

MR HUMPHRIES: It is the merging of organisations to create much larger corporate players. Now, if you are foolish enough to come to this place and tell us, "Oh, we can survive in that sort of marketplace. Yes, we will clip off our energy retailer and put it out there in the marketplace. It will be fine for the rest of ACTEW", then you are fooling yourself. But, of course, Mr Quinlan is not a fool. Mr Quinlan knows full well what the risks are in this matter, because he argued those risks before the Labor Party conference less than two years ago. He argued those same sorts of issues. He argued for flexibility in relaxing public ownership, so we know that Mr Quinlan understands this issue. I am not sure if all of his colleagues on the Labor benches also understand this issue.

MR SPEAKER: Thank you. Supplementary, Mr Quinlan?

MR QUINLAN: I am sure, Treasurer, that the clipping service would then have provided you with the news clipping about Woodside Petroleum entering into natural gas production, with a certain increase in competition within the gas industry. That also would impinge upon the deal that we are proposing now. Would you then inform this place how the one-on-one deal with AGL, having quarantined us from competition for our business, is still going to get us the best bottom line - competition in bidding for our retail sales?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I have answered this question about five times in the last two weeks. I will give the answer a sixth time, if you wish. First of all, it is not a one-on-one deal. We are talking about ACTEW having gone through a process of canvassing a large number of expressions of interest to determine that AGL's proposal was superior to others in that process. The second point is that AGL's position results in an increase in the customer base of - I do not know why I am answering the question, as he is not even listening to the bloody answer.

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