Mr STIRLING - 1999-11-25
The Territory government is currently engaged in litigation with former Country Liberal Party Chief Minister Paul Everingham’s company, NT Power. Can the Treasurer confirm that to date almost $7m has been spent in meeting the costs of this litigation? Will he admit that this litigation shows just how badly the Country Liberal Party has handled the process of electricity deregulation?
ANSWER
There are 2 points, Mr Speaker. I start with the closing smarty remark from the member for Nhulunbuy, who said how we have mishandled, as a government, the deregulation of electricity. It was that very member who said in this House and, I think, on the airwaves, when the government received the report that it commissioned from consultants examining the Power and Water Authority: ‘Implement the full scale of the report immediately. Don’t hesitate, government - get out there and do it! You have a report. What did you bother getting it done for if you’re not going to implement it?’
When we told him that it said, ‘Sell the Power and Water Authority and sack all the workers’, he said, ‘Oops! We’d better have another look at the report’. That’s old Kneejerk Syd. That’s how he works. ‘You have a report. Implement it immediately. Don’t worry about the consequences. Just sack all the staff, and we’ll go on merrily’.
There is the starting point from the shadow spokesman. He doesn’t even read the report but calls for its implementation without knowing what the contents and the recommendations are. Then he has to withdraw his suggestion of the direction that the government should go in.
Now to get to the other point. If the honourable member was just a little aware of the circumstances of legal actions, he would know that when one is taken to court by another party, one doesn’t have the luxury of saying: ‘Sorry, we’re not going to turn up. We’re not going to take any notice of this legal action. We’ll sit cosily in our offices at the Power and Water Authority and ignore this. See you later’.
Come on! Even you know better than that. As a person who’s been taken into action or an authority that’s been taken into action by another party, one must respond. And if there is a response there is a cost. It was something that we had to respond to rather than initiate and get into ourselves, and as a consequence there has been a cost. Even children in preschool would understand those basic issues. It’s a great pity that the honourable member for Nhulunbuy demonstrates his ignorance both in relation to the legal action and the response that we had to put in place. Had we followed his advice and adopted the report that we got from the consultants, all of the Power and Water Authority staff would have got the sack overnight and we would have been in diabolical trouble keeping electricity supplies up to Territorians.
You should be much better at doing your job than you have just demonstrated by the ridiculous question that you have asked and your lack of understanding of the task at hand. You now get more money than the previous Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Why don’t you lift your performance to meet the remuneration that you receive?
ANSWER
There are 2 points, Mr Speaker. I start with the closing smarty remark from the member for Nhulunbuy, who said how we have mishandled, as a government, the deregulation of electricity. It was that very member who said in this House and, I think, on the airwaves, when the government received the report that it commissioned from consultants examining the Power and Water Authority: ‘Implement the full scale of the report immediately. Don’t hesitate, government - get out there and do it! You have a report. What did you bother getting it done for if you’re not going to implement it?’
When we told him that it said, ‘Sell the Power and Water Authority and sack all the workers’, he said, ‘Oops! We’d better have another look at the report’. That’s old Kneejerk Syd. That’s how he works. ‘You have a report. Implement it immediately. Don’t worry about the consequences. Just sack all the staff, and we’ll go on merrily’.
There is the starting point from the shadow spokesman. He doesn’t even read the report but calls for its implementation without knowing what the contents and the recommendations are. Then he has to withdraw his suggestion of the direction that the government should go in.
Now to get to the other point. If the honourable member was just a little aware of the circumstances of legal actions, he would know that when one is taken to court by another party, one doesn’t have the luxury of saying: ‘Sorry, we’re not going to turn up. We’re not going to take any notice of this legal action. We’ll sit cosily in our offices at the Power and Water Authority and ignore this. See you later’.
Come on! Even you know better than that. As a person who’s been taken into action or an authority that’s been taken into action by another party, one must respond. And if there is a response there is a cost. It was something that we had to respond to rather than initiate and get into ourselves, and as a consequence there has been a cost. Even children in preschool would understand those basic issues. It’s a great pity that the honourable member for Nhulunbuy demonstrates his ignorance both in relation to the legal action and the response that we had to put in place. Had we followed his advice and adopted the report that we got from the consultants, all of the Power and Water Authority staff would have got the sack overnight and we would have been in diabolical trouble keeping electricity supplies up to Territorians.
You should be much better at doing your job than you have just demonstrated by the ridiculous question that you have asked and your lack of understanding of the task at hand. You now get more money than the previous Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Why don’t you lift your performance to meet the remuneration that you receive?
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016