Page 1479 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 April 2013
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matters that ACTEW undertakes. Again, various members of the Assembly—and Mr Hanson touched on it today—have heard rumours, and the fact that the shareholders have instigated this review is appropriate in light of those rumours. Whether those rumours are substantiated or not is a matter that time will tell. But the fact that there is an independent review underway which will be reported back is an appropriate form of action.
That will be finalised in May, and the government has undertaken to report back to the Assembly by June on that. Again, using the benchmarks I described earlier, we have a concrete report into the specific matters and rumours that are circulating about, and we have a time frame on when the Assembly will receive that information. Again, the Assembly and the public can have confidence that we will have the information. It may be when that report comes back that members of the Assembly have further concerns, and that will be the time to take them up. At the moment we have rumours circulating in this town. All sorts of rumours circulate in this town about all sorts of things. In this case the shareholders have taken the appropriate steps in seeking an independent review into those.
In terms of the governance issues, the ICRC has put out a draft report. Over the coming months that report will be finalised, at which point the government will respond to it and, of course, the Assembly will have the opportunity to consider the adequacy of that response. Members will also see that the government will make a submission in response, and that has been discussed in the Assembly already. We will be making a submission as part of the response to the draft report by the ICRC. So, again, there will be a publicly available document canvassing where the government is up to in that response process.
All those reports are coming through and there are time frames on each of them. I spent some time discussing the amendments with Mr Barr’s office to ensure there was a level of transparency in each of these issues. On top of all of that, as I discussed at some length earlier, we have the Auditor-General’s report and the normal processes which will follow with that—obviously the public release of it and then the public accounts committee will have another opportunity to consider the issue.
Some issues of regulatory reform are being discussed today, and I add that the other thing that these issues have given rise to is the regulatory framework in which ACTEW and territory-owned corporations generally operate. This is an important issue, and in light of these various reports I think we will be well placed to work out what the next step should be to address those regulatory issues.
It would be best to let the dust settle a little bit on some of the issues that are getting around and to look at the reports that come out. Then we can be clear on what we need to do, if anything, to address issues of concern about the regulatory framework for any territory-owned corporation. But I am not convinced we need to launch into that at this stage given all the other matters that are in play.
In summary, I simply conclude by saying that I am confident these processes will give us a clear picture of where we are at and what the best response to the issues is as they come to light. In supporting the amendments and not supporting the original motion,
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