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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 881 ..

MR SPEAKER: Order! This is not a dialogue.

MR HUMPHRIES: I wish to make a final point. We have been told that you cannot trust this Government; that if we give it a blank cheque it will go away and wreak havoc with ACTEW's assets; that it is crazy not to provide a final overview of what goes on. Let us be perfectly clear about the process from here.

If this Bill is passed tonight, the ACTEW board will go away and negotiate a deal with AGL. It will bring back that negotiated deal, assuming it is successfully resolved, to the shareholders and to the Government for the test of whether this is in the public interest of the ACT. Having provided for the opportunity for the Government to assess that matter, the Government will either tick it off or it will knock it back. If it ticks it off, it will then go ahead into a joint partnership between ACTEW and AGL.

In making that occur, the Assembly still holds the Government accountable for what occurs. If we approve a deal which is bad, which sells off the assets of the Territory at bargain basement prices, which puts the business of ACTEW at serious detriment vis a vis AGL, if we provide for a bad deal in any respect, if we do not honour the undertakings which we have given, if we do not provide the job guarantees that go with this arrangement, if we do not fully account to the Assembly in the way in which the amendment to the earlier motion moved by Mr Kaine has provided for, the Government wears that on the floor of this Assembly.

The idea that the Assembly has washed its hands of this process by passing this motion and this Bill tonight is simply nonsense, because those opposite will hold us to account for what occurs with this process from tonight. If they are going to hold us to account, if they are going to come back in here and question us about it and ask us to explain the process that will be used from this point, then clearly there is an ongoing exercise in scrutiny of the process which the parliament exercises.

That puts the lie to the claim that the Government has been written a blank cheque by the motion tonight; that you cannot trust this Government and we are losing control over ACTEW. That puts the lie to that claim. On that basis, I say that the Assembly is entitled to go ahead and make this decision. It is entitled to put this process in train, because it is up to the Government to come back and show the Assembly that we have made a sound decision in the circumstances. If we do not, we face the consequences.

Question put:

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