Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion and I do so with pleasure. Australians are opposed to the sale of Snowy Hydro, and most members, if they are paying any attention to the public debate, would recognise that. There are a number of issues that need to be aired, and they were not aired when the motion first came through the parliament. People were very confused about what the issue was. Many members of the government did not even know that a motion was going to be introduced and that the government did not need to introduce legislation.

Today there is still a degree of confusion. We are told that there were something like 46 agreements within the original corporatisation of Snowy Hydro, which took place in 1997 and came into effect in 2001. We are told that those 46 agreements are part of the contractual arrangements that will be a condition of the sale. But no-one that I am aware of has actually seen those documents. There is no mandate for the sale of Snowy Hydro. I am as critical of the New South Wales government as anybody in this parliament—and no government has been to the people on this issue, including the Commonwealth government. There has been very little debate on this very important issue. There is confusion over the facts around the constitutionality and the legalities involved, the operation of the scheme and the various compensatory mechanisms that will or will not come into play if, in fact, the New South Wales government intervenes on the control of water and what that will mean to the generation of power or to any private business that will be deprived of the possibility of generating income from that source.

We do not know what the contract says. Anybody who has made application for a prospectus has not been provided with any great information on the sale documentation at all. Even though there is a 75-year water licence, which I think now has 72 years to run, we do not know what the compensation mechanisms may or may not be. How can we sell an asset which is essentially owned by the people of Australia without these questions being answered? It is time that the Commonwealth government took some leadership in this debate.

I am distressed to see this announcement today coming from the Hon. Nick Minchin and the Victorian and New South Wales ministers responsible for the sale. Nick Minchin says: ‘The Australian government will introduce legislation in June that imposes the following permanent restrictions on Snowy Hydro Ltd.’ There are a number of restrictions, which I will not go through—people can read them in the press release—but the fact is that this government and this parliament cannot make those restrictions permanent. Our Constitution provides that one government cannot bind a future parliament through legislation. That is the legality of the situation.

Where are the Labor Party on this motion? We have seen where they are in New South Wales. We have heard the argument that the New South Wales government has cash flow problems and needs the money. The New South Wales government has no debt. It has a cash flow problem that, hopefully, is temporary. By doing this the New South Wales government is selling the house to pay the grocery bill. There is no need for the New South Wales government to enter this arrangement. There is no need for the Victorian government to enter this arrangement. Least of all does the Commonwealth government need to take this step. In my view, the Commonwealth government has displayed some leadership in recent years through the National Water Initiative and other initiatives. We have started to look at the water debate across state boundaries.

Senator Minchin has been grinding away at the states, particularly Victoria, over many months now to make the sale possible. For the Commonwealth government to give up that leadership role with many things still unknown is quite disgraceful. I believe today’s announcement by the minister about the caps, the board structure, foreign ownership restrictions et cetera is nothing but a Clayton’s announcement on the sale document. Hopefully, the people of Australia will rise up against the bill that the government is going to introduce to the parliament.

What are the reasons for the sale? We hear the corporate mantra that governments should not be involved in the delivery of business services. These services are fairly significant. They involve water going into the Murray and Murrumbidgee systems and renewable power generated into the electricity grid linked to four states. This is very important for our future energy needs, particularly at a time when the Prime Minister and others are, quite rightly, talking about the need for a debate on future energy needs and the possibility of nuclear energy. So why aren’t we debating the Snowy Hydro issue in greater detail? This is our major construction achievement of 50 years ago—the crown jewel of looking forward, multiculturalism and a whole range of other issues.

The New South Wales and Commonwealth governments agree. They say that there is a need for growth in Snowy Hydro and that, for Snowy Hydro to go forward, there will be capital requirements. Investigation shows that turbine maintenance for Snowy Hydro should not be any greater than about $25 million per annum. The operational and general maintenance costs are probably about $15 million per annum. So there is a $40 million requirement annually, not the $200 million or the $1.5 billion over five years that many people are talking about.

Snowy Hydro generates a return of about $150 million each year and pays about $50 million in tax, so it does have the capacity to self-fund within those restrictions. The issue may well be that Snowy Hydro Ltd has greater ambitions than the supply of hydroelectricity—such as gas turbines and accessing the water market. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister is putting in place rules which could see Snowy Hydro becoming a major player or a water baron when it comes to the access to water licences and in doing what it does in the derivatives market in insurance at the moment—selling at the peaks when it has a captive market to sell into and multiplying profits in that way. That is something in which some public administration really should be involved.

I do not know whether there are restrictions on that within the sale contract or not—but I do not think anybody else in this chamber knows either. Those are the sorts of things that people need to know before they can make proper decisions as to the sale, the long-term impacts on the downstream water users and the long-term impacts on power users on the eastern seaboard.

In conclusion, there will be a rally held in Canberra a fortnight from today at approximately 12 o’clock. We are calling on all Australians, if they are serious about the long-term needs of water and power generation in this nation and if they are serious about public ownership of much-needed instrumentalities, to make a stand. It is time that the people started to turn up and generate their power—the power to maintain these instrumentalities that were earned through the deaths and hard work of many Australians over many years. It is time that they turned up, put the heat on and poured water on these irrational governments that are making irrational decisions in some sort of rational economic debate. I challenge all Australians to be at that rally.

The fact is that the Prime Minister, through Nick Minchin—and I pay credit to the member for Riverina and others in this parliament—has come out today with this press release that puts up a bandaid approach in terms of ‘permanent restrictions’ when we all know they cannot be permanent. The Prime Minister admitted at question time that obviously they cannot be permanent. What is the point of introducing them if we are interested in the long-term needs of water and power generation within this country? It is time for people right across Australia to stand up.

I congratulate Alan Jones and the many others who have had the guts, in terms of their positions on radio and in newspapers, to articulate what people right across Australia are saying. It is very obvious in here that, privately, whether they be Labor, Liberal or New Liberals, members do not want it sold. But with the forces of party mechanisms they are being forced to participate in this farce of the sale of Snowy Hydro. I call again on all of the people across Australia who are opposed to this, or opposed to the privatisation of much-needed public utilities, to show up at the rallies in Sydney, in Cooma and the one in Canberra in a fortnight’s time.

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