Page 972 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 26 July 1989
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Authority in this matter. After normalising the haulage and volume with the cost of an equivalent quantity of gas in New South Wales, we have $8.4m paid for gas in New South Wales and $10.7m paid in the ACT, and that is after normalising other offset factors such as haulage and other matters. That is a difference of $2.3m or 27.4 per cent based on 1988-89 prices.
But the problem does not stop there in comparing ACT consumers with New South Wales consumers. Given that the pipeline spur from Dalton to Watson is only 58 kilometres, it seems that the extra $2.3m charged this year by the Federal Pipeline Authority is grossly excessive when one has regard to normal amortisation rates and the 1981 construction cost of $9m for that 58-kilometre line.
The 1987-88 annual report of the Pipeline Authority shows that the cost of ACT gas at Moomba was $4.4m and, Mr Speaker, that the resale price to AGL Canberra was $8.56m. That gas, in its trip across from South Australia, acquired a further $4.16m in value - that is, a 94.6 per cent rise in the cost. In that year that was for the supply and delivery of 83 million cubic metres of gas.
The terms of the gas sale agreement between the Pipeline Authority and AGL for the Dalton-Watson natural gas pipeline apply to the end of the year 2006. So we are locked into that. That agreement provides also for the annual recovery of all costs and expenses, together with a 6 per cent profit margin on all gas supplied.
Mr Speaker, in 1980 AGL was awarded the franchise to market and distribute natural gas in the ACT. The local electricity distributor, ACTEA at the time, was a major competitor. The situation is that this Federal Pipeline Authority, which presumably is earmarked for privatisation at some stage, is ripping off the ACT consumer. This Federal authority, complete with its more than 90 staff members, I believe, its helicopter and its other accoutrements, is doing very handsomely out of us. I presume Mr Berry has gas connected, because he is looking very troubled and pale.
Mr Speaker, to find that we have a Federal authority, during these troubled times, hitting us for a 94.6 per cent price rise on dragging some gas - part of the gas that it pulls through anyway for New South Wales - to the ACT consumer is something, but to see the ACT Government quibbling with AGL, which is struggling under this burden to make its margins, is another issue, and I will come to that in a moment.
Mr Speaker, in 1980 AGL was awarded the franchise to market and distribute natural gas in the ACT. I read that, Mr Speaker, but I do not usually read speeches. In the same year in which AGL Canberra was established the company commenced laying gas mains to quickly establish a base load to enter the market with a competitive unit price. In
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