Peter Andren (Calare, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am seeking leave.

Leave granted.

I am grateful for the fact that the government, contrary to my advice, has determined not to gag this debate. The Snowy Mountains scheme is the Vegemite of national infrastructure. The only important difference is that we own the Snowy. This sale is all about setting up the private sector to exploit the peak power market. It is Enronesque in its potential. It is about derivatives. It is about selling insurance. It is about building gas fired ministations to manipulate the power market and conserving water that should go to irrigators and the environment in order to maximise power returns at manipulated peak prices. It does not need a foreign gorilla to do this.

This is part of a process to set up a casino of power supply and manipulation of the supply market. The 10 per cent cap on shareholdings is a nonsense, as is the cap on foreign ownership. The 10 per cent cap will guarantee that shareholders with a lazy $300 million to spend can buy up to a 10th of the Snowy scheme under this offer—hardly mums and dads. I am sorry to disagree with the member for Riverina on this point—and I acknowledge her firm endeavours and passion around this issue—but there is no way in the world that her private member’s bill can enshrine in legislation a permanent cap on any sort of shareholding, as the Prime Minister admitted during question time.

This is a sly sale that has no mandate. It is the selling of stolen goods. There is no referendum, no inquiry and no agreement with the electorate at a state or national level. The parliamentary motions on the Senate and House Notice Papers six weeks ago clearly appeared on the day they were introduced. They were to be rushed through with minimal debate—thus was the hope of the coalition—with Labor approval to satisfy the revenue problems of the Iemma government in particular. It has been well documented that the debate was not semaphored—except to those who had a special interest in ensuring that the matter went through the parliament with the greatest of haste. The states had no motion on this and, like the federal parliament, they had no legislation. They made sure of that when their corporatisation legislation ensured that a sell-off did not have to go through parliament.

Why did the federal parliament not adopt the same strategy? Of course, the government, at that stage, did not control both houses, and, as I understand it, the Senate forced an amendment that ensured that any sale be referred to the parliament. There was never to be a full and proper inquiry, there was never to be a parliamentary inquiry and there was never to be a proper debate—as was shown on 29 and 30 March in a shameful process that tried to give the impression that this matter had the imprimatur of the parliament when there was absolutely no mandate and the matter had taken the public by shock. How arrogant, how devious, how appalling! How angry the people are who have come to see me in recent times. They have emailed, they have written and they have rung. They have been in parliament today. These are people who have had a long association with the Snowy Mountains scheme. They know that Snowy Hydro can look after its own infrastructure and its own upgrades well into the future and does not need any injection of taxpayers’ money to do so.

The only reason there was any motion in the parliament was, as I said, that the coalition did not have the numbers. The key to all this is the commercial-in-confidence elements of the so-called agreements—the 75-year water licences and the compensation deed that will see taxpayers forking out to compensate a privatised Snowy Hydro for shortfalls in any guarantees locked into the sale. That is where the taxpayer will be caught out in the future—having been asked whether they wish to buy back their own asset. Forty-six of these so-called agreements will not be open to public gaze.

Snowy Hydro delivers a $150 million dividend to the three governments and $50 million in taxes. It is capable of funding its own capital upgrades, estimated at $40 million a year—nothing like the $1.5 billion that Della Bosca and others allege is required and use to justify the sale. Snowy Hydro does not get, and does not need, state or federal government money to prop it up in any way. The $1.5 billion needed for capital upgrades, which Mr Della Bosca, Mr Iemma, Mr Brumby and this government bang on about, is the spending plan of a fully privatised Snowy Hydro expanding well beyond its current role to manipulate electricity markets in this country, at the expense of Australian consumers, irrigators and the environment, for the benefit, surely as night follows day, of major shareholders. In spite of any attempts to cap foreign ownership, that cannot be guaranteed into the future. Inevitably, down the track, overseas—or, indeed, Australian—mega power operators and market manipulators will have control of those processes and we will leave the way open to manipulation of that market to a degree that could be Enronesque in its outcomes.

Today’s joint announcement is simply the sticking of a collective federal and state digit in the dyke—or, at least, the dam of public opinion. Caps cannot be guaranteed beyond this parliament—and the government knows it. So, too, do the Labor Party and the state governments. Think again, Prime Minister. Think again, Labor. There at 13 million reasons why you should—and they all have a vote.

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