Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The reason Labor is seeking to amend the Asset Recycling Fund Bill 2014 and related bill is that we believe that infrastructure should be built where it will create jobs and growth, not rolled out for short-term political gain. Our amendments will improve the operations of this bill and make it more transparent for taxpayers and industry. Unlike the government, Labor cares about the types of asset sales that will be eligible for a Commonwealth-funded incentive.

We will ensure that funds set aside for education and research infrastructure remain dedicated to that productivity-enhancing endeavour, with proper governance retained. We will make sure that the rules that apply to the Building Australia Fund—a fund to be emptied into this new Asset Recycling Fund—will continue to apply. This is in line with and continues what we did when we were in government. The Labor government established a transparent process to ensure that scarce government money was spent on the most productive investments to create the biggest benefit to the national economy. Our focus was on what was in the best long-term interest of the nation, not what was in our own short-term political interest. It is essential that government investment in infrastructure goes into the most productive infrastructure possible.

Labor will move two groups of amendments to this bill. The first will maintain the $3.5 billion in the Education Investment Fund and those funds dedicated to the purposes of that fund. The second will require that asset sales transactions are approved by the parliament and that a proper analysis is undertaken when decisions are made on productivity-enhancing infrastructure. Part of this amendment will ensure that funded projects have published analyses of project benefits.

I can understand why the Nationals may not be too keen on amendments like this, as all of us are well aware of the National Party's record with regard to the 'regional rorts' program under the Howard government. Who can forget the Auditor-General's report into this program, which found that 43 projects were signed off without departmental approval between 2003 and 2006. And 38 of those 43 projects were in coalition seats. The Auditor-General also found that, in some instances, ministers approved money for projects without even receiving a funding application. If that does not smell like a pork-barrel, a rort, then nothing does. They actually approved funding without receiving an application from the people who they were funding. What was the coalition's response while in government to this damning report by the Auditor-General? Did they think that the independent Auditor-General's recommendation ought be adopted?

Senator O'Sullivan interjecting—

I know the good Queensland senator over there thinks an amendment like this is like a wooden stake to a vampire. It attempts to put to an end the raison d'etre for the Liberal National Party in Queensland: pork-barrelling. So I can understand why I am getting interjections from the other side. But what did they say about this report?

When criticised, the coalition government so often played the man. The Nationals may remain keenly attached to this particularly rancid form of pork-barrelling, with unproductive projects. The Liberals, usually, are just happy throwing a few dollars to their coalition lapdogs so that they can continue to count on their support—just toss them a few pork-barrels and that will keep those nuff-nuffs in the National Party in Queensland happy. That is the way the Liberal Party operates. It has worked for 50 years and they want to keep doing it in this particular bill.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're grateful.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are grateful. We appreciate that you show your gratitude to them. But the Labor opposition want to ensure that this does not become a marginal seat pork-barrel operation for a mates-based approach to government spending. The focus should always be on productivity and jobs.

Labor sees the value in working with the private sector to develop nationally significant infrastructure. People watching and listening to this debate should not fall into the trap of thinking that Labor is anti privatisation. Labor's view is that decisions about assets that are earmarked for privatisation need to stand on their own merits. The question that needs to be asked is: is the privatisation of this infrastructure asset the right approach that will benefit taxpayers and the long-term interests of our country? This should not be done simply to support an ideological fanaticism to privatise assets in the mode of those flat-earth, economic puritans on the other side. Nor should it be the basis for the Commonwealth's commitment to cut funding for nation-building infrastructure. The Commonwealth currently provides grants of up to 80 per cent for infrastructure. Will the states be left to do the heavy lifting on infrastructure, as the Commonwealth steps back and offers only 15 per cent for privatising? Thanks to Labor, current legislation already seeks to encourage private sector investment through a range of measures that were established after extensive consultation with industry. The government just does not seem to be aware of this.

So let me explain it to those opposite. In the 2013 budget, Labor created incentives through uplifting the value of carry-forward losses to bring them in line with the 10-year bond rate for eligible projects up to a value of $25 billion in total. Labor also exempted the carry-forward losses and bad debt reductions from continuity of ownership and the same business tests for eligible projects. These changes encouraged private sector ownership of brownfield infrastructure projects, where expenses are heavily front ended. They came about thanks to an exhaustive consultation process with the sector. They encouraged private investment in nationally important infrastructure. Yet here we are, and the coalition does not even seem to be aware of what legislation is already in place.

On our changes to carry-forward losses, we built this into the Infrastructure Australia process. In order to receive the tax-loss incentive, the independent expert Infrastructure Australia was involved. We specifically put an independent group of experts into the process to ensure it remained fair and proper. The infrastructure being built had to be nation-building infrastructure to access this support. That is the rationale for the amendments we are putting forward to this bill. There needs to be transparency and the government's infrastructure expert needs to be involved so that any privatisation of assets is productivity enhancing.

Labor welcomes the decision the government made a fortnight ago to accept all of the Senate amendments—mainly from the opposition—to the Infrastructure Australia bill. These amendments retain Infrastructure Australia as an independent adviser to government. The challenge now is for the government to accept IA's advice; having talked the talk, it now needs to walk the walk. The advice IA provided on East West stage 2 was that it is not ready to proceed. There is a pretty good reason for that. As someone who lives in Melbourne, I know that the inept, incompetent Napthine government has not actually submitted any significant details—basically, a letter of request. There is a reason why it has not submitted any significant details. You see, when you build a tunnel you normally need two things: you need to know where you are going to start and you need to know where you are going to finish. This proposal is so half baked—no, that is being unkind to half-baked proposals! This proposal is so weak they have decided they know where they are going to start digging a billion-dollar tunnel but they have not actually decided where it is going to come up. That is true. You are trying to hide your laughing! They actually got funding for a tunnel on the basis that they know where they are starting but they do not know where it is going to come up! There is no plan. They have not even got as far as working out where the tunnel will come up in Melbourne. I know, because I live on the western side of Melbourne, that it is somewhere in the west of Melbourne that they are going to bring the tunnel up. But that's all right, let's give them a billion dollars in advance! They have actually given them a billion dollars, two years in advance, before they even know where the tunnel is going to come up. That is what we call pork-barrelling to help out a desperate state Liberal government that is facing oblivion at the polls. So they have thrown a billion dollars at this project to try and make the Napthine government look good before an election. Who would fund one end of a tunnel? Seriously Mr Acting Deputy President, would you fund one end of a tunnel? It is tragic, but it is all true.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment, Senator Conroy.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You've got to start somewhere!

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's right, you've got to start somewhere! We will just build half a tunnel and work out later where it is going to come up! It had better not come up anywhere near my place! This is a project that Infrastructure Australia has advised is not ready to proceed—and here he is, the fiscal messiah, giving a billion dollars to the tunnel when they have not even worked out where it is going to come up. They are not going to start building it for two years but you have given them a billion dollars before they even know where it is going to come up.

I think it is also worth reflecting on the government's Orwellian terminology of 'asset recycling'. Let us call this bill what it is—'encouraging privatisation'. That is what this bill is doing and that is what it should be called. As I said, Labor is not against privatisation. We support it when it results in an addition to productive nation-building infrastructure. We support it when regulation and competition can ensure benefits for consumers with a good return to government. On that, we note the recent comments from the ACCC chair about the risk of inadequate regulatory protections for the sale of monopoly assets in order to access the 15 per cent Commonwealth incentive before July 2016—and well should we note these comments. But, as is typical of this government, they want to hide what they are doing with spin and word-games. They should just own up to what they want out of this legislation and call it the 'Encouraging Privatisation Bill'.

Before I conclude, I want to say a few words about the coalition's short-sighted decision to abolish the $3.5 billion Education Investment Fund. This cut to the education fund comes on top of the government's $5.8 billion cuts to higher education and student support. It is a far cry from their pre-election promises of 'no changes to education'. We all remember the then Leader of the Opposition, Mr Tony Abbott, looking the television camera in the eye and saying, 'No cuts to education.' But the EIF provides funding for projects that create or develop significant infrastructure in higher education—research and vocational education and training institutions. Its abolition raises serious questions about this government's commitment to long-term sustainable infrastructure for teaching and research at Australia's public universities.

Mr Abbott looked the television camera in the eye and said, 'No cuts in education'—just another lie. This is not the government the people of Australia voted for. Mr Abbott made a great play over the last three years about trust—'Take me at my word' and 'I mean what I say'—and he lied his way through the election campaign. This is just another demonstration of the extent of the lies that Mr Abbott told to the Australian people to gain their trust and support going into that last election. That is why one of Labor's amendments to this legislation is to reinstate this fund. According to the Australian Technology Network of Universities:

EIF funding has been used to develop new research and education infrastructure across universities, VET institutions, research centres and institutes and the CSIRO.

That is what this fund is being used for. They go on to say:

To date 71 infrastructure projects have been funded by EIF to the sum of $2.4 billion.

They also say:

Without systematic and sustainable funding for research infrastructure, Australia will not be able to attract the best and brightest researchers in the world, nor commit to significant long term research and commercialisation projects as is done in our competitor economies.

This is another act from a government that does not understand or care about science and research.

Our amendments are important amendments that improve the operations of this bill and they make it more transparent for taxpayers. It will never be a perfect block to those pork-barrellers from the Queensland Liberal and National parties—nothing will ever stop them; they will find a way to get their snout in any trough—but this is as good as is possible to do in this chamber today. Our amendments will ensure that a vital fund is retained so that it can continue to support education infrastructure. These amendments continue the focus that Labor had when in government: that infrastructure decisions need to be based on what is best for Australia in the long run—for our national interests, not the National or Liberal party interest in pork-barrelling in marginal seats in Queensland and other states.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make some comments on behalf of the Australian Greens on the Asset Recycling Fund Bill 2014 and related bill. I agreed with much of what Senator Conroy said. In fact, when we come to the committee stage, the Australian Greens will be moving an amendment. We think the bill is not particularly accurately named and we will be moving to change the name of the bill to the 'Encouraging Privatisation Bill'—which it quite clearly is.

The only significant difference that I have with Senator Conroy is where he points out that this was the best that could be done by the Senate today—and I strongly disagree. The best that could be done by the Senate today would be to block this bill and send it back to the drafters in the Prime Minister's office or from whence it came to have a good hard think about exactly what it is that they are proposing to do. This bill should not proceed, for reasons that are so self-evident as to be barely worth documenting.

The myth of the pre-eminence of private sector efficiency for running essential services—and, in particular, for running natural monopoly infrastructure—should be set aside today, before this bill is committed to the vote, for the shallow and self-serving ideological dead-end that it is. Bribing financially stretched state governments to sell assets in return for funding catastrophically expensive urban freeways and tunnels graphically illustrates the coalition's poverty of vision when it comes to infrastructure funding.

The Australian Greens strongly oppose this measure. We will continue to promote deliberative planning processes to establish infrastructure plans that actually serve communities rather than divide them. This bill—to put it as plainly as I can—is about bribing state and territory governments to sell off public assets in order to obtain Commonwealth funding. We will be urging Labor to join with the Greens and vote down this bill which would, among other things, create a slush fund for toll roads at the expense of investment in public transport.

I think I understand why Prime Minister Tony Abbott is such a hardliner on climate change. I think part of it is ideological and I think part of it is that he is generally too terrified to acknowledge what is happening to the global climate and part of it is that the Liberal and National parties are bought and paid for by the coal, oil and gas industries. That is reasonably easy to understand. But I find it harder to understand why the Prime Minister has such a hatred of public transport. Is it just that he does not ever use it himself? Is it that basic, or is there more at play? Why would you come into power and crash public transport projects that had already been funded and that were already in the advanced design stage? I am speaking of course of the Perth light rail project.

That was a proposition put forward initially by the Greens. I acknowledge the work of the state Labor government—the Gallop and later Carpenter governments—and particularly former WA minister Alannah MacTiernan in doing early study work on light rail for Perth. It is never the coalition, either at a state or federal level, that brings these projects forward. The Greens launched the proposal at the 2007 federal election. After a couple of years of campaigning and hard work, the Barnett government—deeply unpopular, traumatised, moribund and in a bit of a mess—took up the idea, proposed it and committed a little more than $4 million to design and pre-feasibility work.

So that was a Green initiated project, designed by Liberal and National parties in Perth and Western Australia—and we got $500 million from a federal Labor minister in the Commonwealth budget for implementation and development. So it was very much a cross-party initiative. At about this time last year we were thinking that we had actually managed to pull politics out of the proposal and that the Liberals, Nationals, Greens and Labor were going to be able to get a light rail network built in Western Australia—for the first time since 1958.

What happened? Prime Minister Tony Abbott comes to office and says, 'There will be no public transport under a government I lead,' pulls $5 million off the table and instead we get this obscene $925 million contribution—which effectively gets the project over the line and makes it bankable—for a private freight highway through a wetland. That is one of the reasons why we are opposing a bill such as this. The federal government have effectively put on the table $9½ billion worth of funding around the country for projects that have effectively circumvented Infrastructure Australia's arms-length assessment procedure, and now they are just dropping freeways on people's heads. It is a little similar to the east-west tunnel catastrophe that Senator Conroy was outlining, although I understand that the Labor Party has a rather morally ambiguous position towards whether that gets built or not.

In Western Australia, the situation is much clearer. The state and federal Labor Party oppose this freeway. The state and federal Australian Greens oppose this freeway. The community oppose the freeway. Most of the local government authorities in the area oppose the freeway. People who care about urban bushland oppose it. The local Aboriginal mob oppose four lanes of tarmac smashing through sacred sites on the shores of Bibra Lake, or Walliabup. So it is fairly easy to see that this project should never have seen the light of day. But there was $920 million committed to it before you had even seen the design. The Commonwealth bureaucrats who are writing the cheques out did not even know whether it would be an elevated freeway or not. Nobody knows what is going to happen to all the traffic—the masses of container traffic that you are going to be dumping onto Tydeman Road through four sets of traffic lights. Nobody knows. The thing has not been designed. Nobody has released the cost-benefit analysis—based, undoubtedly, on hallucinations of time savings that amount to $4 billion or $5 billion, just imaginary numbers.

The government believe that anything that is not nailed down should be privatised. They never saw an urban freeway that they did not like, and they have this strange loathing of public transport. Maybe you spend your entire time being carted around in Comcars and chauffeur driven limousines and do not feel the need for public transport. It should be user-pays, shouldn't it? That loathing for public transport such that you would abolish projects already afoot is stranger to me than understanding how the coal industry could have just bought and written your climate policy for you. It is simpler to join those particular dots. So I hope that Labor will rethink their support for this bill.

We will go into this in detail in committee, but I foreshadow that we will be supporting most of the amendments that the Labor Party are putting forward around cost-benefit analysis. They are entirely consistent with amendments that we passed a fortnight ago when we were debating the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill. They are sensible. If this thing is going to be passed back to the House of Representatives, it does make sense to ensure that those checks and balances are in there. But I do find it strange to see the Australian Labor Party aiding and abetting Prime Minister Tony Abbott's privatised urban freeways agenda. It is strange, particularly when you have been so strong at home in the instance of the Roe Highway. I find that a bit peculiar.

We believe that public assets should remain in public hands unless there is a very compelling case for them to be sold off. A couple of weeks ago, at the ACOSS national conference in Brisbane, I caught up with Professor Charles Sampford. He has very interesting views on these things. He has spent many years studying what actually happens in the process of state asset sales. Professor Sampford is Foundation Dean, Professor of Law and Research Professor in Ethics at Griffith University. He is not a hardline pro- or anti-privatisation person per se. In fact he has got some quite strong comments for anybody residing at the opposite poles of the debate, telling them to take a look at what the actual costs are and arguments that can be made for where the state should not own a particular thing. I will give one example that is close to my heart. With the National Broadband Network, we supported the wholesale arm of that company being brought back into public hands from Telstra. But, at the retail level, there is no sense having a state owned retailer necessarily. It makes entirely good sense for the private sector to be competing to provide a decent service to people. But, for heaven's sake, you do not privatise the wholesale essential service end of the network, which is a natural monopoly. So there is a spectrum of views.

Professor Sampford's take on it is very interesting, because he looks into what happens during the process of state asset sales and looks at all the hidden costs that exist, which I mention for the benefit of the boosters, those right up the far end of the pro-privatisation spectrum, who just want to sell everything off because they do not really believe in the existence of democratic states, which is kind of bizarre. Here is what he says:

Transfers of ownership are not without cost. Transaction costs include the costs of legislation, legal advice, due diligence, brokerage and underwriting fees. The fees can easily reach 2-3 per cent of the value of the enterprise and are not irrelevant to the excitement privatisation generates among the legal and stockbroking industries—and the uncritical support they offer for it.

That is kind of interesting when you see that the range of voices in the public debate demanding that things be sold off tend to come from the very same people—the hordes of parasites who swirl around try to take a cut out of these things—who are the direct financial beneficiaries of asset sales. Professor Sampford goes on:

To this must be added the tendency to underprice the asset to ensure that the privatisation is a 'success'. Politicians pushing privatisation are less concerned that the price be maximised than that the sale go through. In this they will be aided and abetted by the underwriters who want to minimise their own risk.

So there you have it. There is a certain kind of moral hazard. The private sector see a fat asset that they can potentially strip, fire a whole heap of people, break up and do with as they wish—an asset built up over years or decades by taxpayers' money that can be sold cheaply to them to suck a profit out of. So they are all for it. Then there are the analysts, the lawyers, the underwriters, the brokers and this whole cloud of people who materialise out of the woodwork to assist the government in flogging off something that people built. They are all for it. They are busily writing op-eds in the newspapers saying that this will be a fantastic thing, and the public interest gets wiped off the table.

We can see, from the clauses and the way in which this bill has been presented to the parliament, that the Abbott government is right up the far end of the pro-privatisation spectrum. That is why, if the bill is to pass the Senate, the Greens will be supporting the Labor amendments around some checks and balances, and we will be introducing some amendments of our own. It is not appropriate to be bribing state governments who are starved of cash—and we know that; the Commonwealth has got most of the taxing power; it has got 75 per cent of the taxing power. The states sit upon a perilously narrow taxation base. To be telling them, 'If you want new transport infrastructure you need to sell hospitals, you need to sell ports, you need to sell what is left of your electricity grids or power stations,' as much as they remain in public hands, 'and you need to basically throw them to the whims of the market, otherwise you will not see a dollar in Commonwealth funding,' is a disgrace. I will have a great deal more to say when we come to the committee stage of the bill and start going through amendments in details, but it is the strong view of the Australian Greens that this bill not proceed past the second reading stage.

Nova Peris (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Asset Recycling Fund Bill 2014 and cognate bill which essentially provide for the Commonwealth to provide an incentive to privatise state and territory assets and to recycle the proceeds into new infrastructure. The Commonwealth contribution is to provide state and territory governments with an additional 15 per cent for the reinvested sale proceeds to the cost of the project. Firstly, I support the position from Labor that projects funded under the scheme should be subject to the advice from Infrastructure Australia but, in particular, I support the position that a disallowable instrument should be provided for each potential sale so that the parliament can block any potential asset sale as ineligible for this scheme. This is because I have some very serious concerns about how this scheme will be applied in the Northern Territory, as do many Territorians who have contacted me with their concerns on what the Northern Territory Country Liberal government will do under the scheme.

Territorians do not want the scheme to be used by the CLP government to justify selling off our valuable public assets. They do not want the CLP government to sell off Power and Water, TIO and the Port of Darwin. This is why the Labor amendment supporting the disallowance instrument is so important. I will come back to the concerns that I and many other Territorians and community members have in relation to the selling off of our efforts.

As we all know, the Northern Territory suffers from a major infrastructure deficit. This is not a political statement; it is a fact. It is why we have a parliamentary committee looking into developing the North. We are also currently suffering from a major lack of infrastructure funding. The budget had no new infrastructure funding for the Northern Territory. All they have done is to attempt to re-announce projects from previous budgets. In fact, the Abbott budget outlined that over the next seven years the Northern Territory will get less than one per cent of the nation's infrastructure budget. You simply cannot develop the North by spending 99 per cent of the funding down south. Our lack of infrastructure funding has been met with a great deal of dismay in the Northern Territory. Even Chief Minister Adam Giles has been pushed to attack his own party for the pathetic amount of funding coming to the Northern Territory. Recently Treasurer Joe Hockey came to Darwin. He was asked by journalists at a press conference about the lack of funding. He said we should not be jealous. Can you believe that? This is exactly what he said, 'Don’t be jealous, because the rest of the country is jealous of your unemployment rate and the fact you have a very strong economy here. In other parts of the country we would need to lift the economy because ultimately it is not about getting a greater share of the pie. It is about lifting the total economy so that everyone can benefit.' Remarkably, member for Solomon Natasha Griggs supported his claims and said that the money should go down south because we did not have the workforce in the Northern Territory to carry out the work. Naturally, the Darwin media, as you can imagine, gave a lot of coverage about her outrageous, her outrageous remarkable claims, which no-one simply agreed with. She tried to claim that she was taken out of context so the Northern Territory News printed the entire claim. They hung her out to dry with her own words. There was nothing out of context. She simply outlined that she thought infrastructure funding should not come to the Northern Territory.

We have also seen in the Northern Territory News Joe Hockey refusing to rule out that they will not use the revenue they get from their planned fuel tax to pay for roads they have already committed to. Regardless of the views of Natasha Griggs and Joe Hockey, everyone else in the Northern Territory is concerned about the lack of funding, including Northern Territory government.

As I mentioned, the other major issue is the Northern Territory is under threat of privatisation. The Northern Territory government is clearly looking at selling off several of our assets. The big three currently under threat are Power and Water, Territory Insurance Office and the Port of Darwin. The Northern Territory government is clearly looking at selling these assets and I am concerned that they will use the asset recycling scheme as a justification to sell them. I am also extremely concerned that the Commonwealth would use the scheme as a gun to be held to the Northern Territory's head: 'Sell your assets or forget about infrastructure funding!' We should not have to sell our assets to get infrastructure funding. Projects should be funded based on needs not on whether you are willing to sell your assets.

Prior to the last election in the Northern Territory, the Country Liberal Party signed written contracts with several remote communities and regions which they have since effectively torn up. None of the infrastructure spending promise has been delivered. This is one of the main reasons three of the regional members walked out on them. For example, they promised an all-year accessible road to Wadeye. They promised this in a signed, written agreement with the community. In the tropics, such a road would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. We are coming up to nearly two years since the promise was made and two budgets have come and gone. There has been no funding or even a suggestion of funding. There has been no sign of any attempt to deliver on this promise. This was just one example that made up billions of dollars of underfunded election promises in the bush that are simply not happening. As former Chief Minister Paul Henderson, said, 'They are just spreading fairy dust in the bush.' He was right. They made underfunded promises they never intended to keep and it is coming back to bite them. As I have mentioned, they have already lost three of their own bush members.

I am concerned that in the CLP's desperation to pretend to be delivering on the billions of dollars they require that they would definitely sell off our assets under this scheme. I will briefly go through each of them and our concerns. Power and Water is the first one. After the CLP promised to cut the cost of power, they even ran election ads complaining about how much people dreaded their power bills. They immediately put up power bills annually by $2, 000 a household. Most people at the time were very much of the view that the CLP were fattening Power and Water up for sale. It now looks as though they were right. The Northern Territory government, without any analysis, modelling or consultation, has recently split up Power and Water into three separate entities. The only reason to do this would be to sell it, breaking it up into nice little saleable entities. In fact, the Chief Minister has already suggested that the sale of Power and Water under the asset recycling scheme will be considered. He said he had the view that the scheme is a means to get extra taxpayer value for public assets and he would not rule it out.

We have no gas pipe to the households in the Northern Territory and we are very reliant on Power and Water for air conditioning. We had the highest power bills in this country. We also get some pretty big storms and reliability is a big issue. Just last month we had the town of Nhulunbuy without power for 24 hours. We have seen the same in Darwin. Could you imagine if Melbourne or Sydney was without power for 24 hours—and this happens regularly in Darwin?

People in the Northern Territory know that selling Power and Water would guarantee two things: higher prices and longer, more frequent blackouts. I am therefore very concerned that Power and Water will be sold off under the scheme that this bill creates. I am also very concerned that the people of the Northern Territory will get no say.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for this debate has now expired.