Gary Nairn (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I refer the member for Prospect to the press conference that the Prime Minister and I gave on the Friday morning a couple of weeks ago, whatever date that was, with the detail of the government’s announcement. The federal government, as the member for Prospect may or may not be aware, had a 13 per cent stake in Snowy Hydro. The federal government was not in a position to privatise Snowy Hydro; the only government that was in a position to privatise Snowy Hydro was the New South Wales government. In fact, it was the New South Wales government that made an announcement in December all on its own, without any reference to the federal government or the Victorian government, that it would sell its 58 per cent shareholding and privatise Snowy Hydro. Consequently, a month or two later, the Australian government and the Victorian government agreed that they would sell their shareholdings. I emphasise that the original announcement by the New South Wales government was not conditional upon the sale of the Commonwealth’s 13 per cent and the Victorian government’s 29 per cent; it was a unilateral decision. As a shareholder of only 13 per cent, the Australian government was not running this privatisation.

After listening to the Australian electorate, in a very broad sense, the Australian government came to a decision that we would not proceed with the sale of our 13 per cent. So the only decision that the Australian government made was not to sell that 13 per cent. There was no reason for us to assume that New South Wales would do anything other than continue with selling their 58 per cent, given that they had made the announcement unilaterally in the first place and it was not conditional on the sale of other governments’ shareholdings. Strangely, an hour or so before the Australian government’s decision was announced, the New South Wales Premier made a very forceful case on radio that his government would proceed with their majority shareholding; however, within about 15 minutes of the Prime Minister’s announcement, the Premier had changed his mind. People can make what they like of that. I think he said ‘pulling the rug out’ from under the sale about 20 times in the space of a couple of minutes, which was also a perplexing statement, given that the New South Wales government had made the original decision on their own.

But this discussion happening in the chamber is with respect to the appropriations bills, which is what I thought we were here for, and I can inform the chamber that there was $13.7 million provided for in 2006-07 to meet the external costs associated with the Australian government’s sale of its 13 per cent shareholding in Snowy Hydro Ltd. With that decision not to proceed with the sale, Finance will return the unspent funds to the budget.

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