Page 974 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 26 July 1989
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We do not know how to gauge those issues, Mr Speaker, but they require choice for the community. Surely, if we were not getting a 94.6 per cent hit off the Pipeline Authority, ACTEA, now ACTEW, might have to compete a lot harder in this market. To what extent, we ask, has ACTEA in its former style, and now ACTEW in its present style, not assisted AGL to get in on the market to provide this lower claimed cost service?
Mr Speaker, I find that ACTEW has constantly refused to have common trenching arrangements with AGL. We have the absurd situation in new estates of two people digging their own trenches to put their pipes through. We believe that AGL has made a proper and reasonable arrangement with Telecom to have common trenching, but, no, ACTEW cannot have common trenching.
In discussions with industry the Rally has been informed of concerns, from sources as diverse as CARD and the Master Builders Construction and Housing Association, about getting ACTEW into common trenching arrangements. Clearly, we are not going to put electricity and water mains together, but we certainly could have put electricity in at the same time as gas and Telecom mains. What is the cause of this loss, wastage and delay for developers and all the rest? Is there some undercurrent, some agenda unresolved, between ACTEW and AGL? Certainly, healthy competition does not hurt, but is this costing the Canberra consumer?
Mr Speaker, this is a very important issue, and I summarise it again. There is an ordinance drafted covering the many issues affecting gas supply in the ACT. This Government does not want to sit next week. This is an important issue affecting public safety, investor confidence in the ACT by AGL, and the interests of other factory developers who cannot get on to lines that AGL is offering to put in because of the high costs of mains distribution and the margin on which AGL is operating.
Mr Speaker, I will not go into AGL's apparent professional charging policies, but it has a policy of charging 2 per cent above the bond rate, in terms of its profit margin. That is nothing abnormal in commerce, as many of us know. We cannot say that this is some sort of speech by the Residents Rally in favour of the profit making of AGL. The Rally's interest is, of course, in working out why this Federal Pipeline Authority is hitting us for this enormous rise.
We have gone back two or three times on this issue to the relevant authorities and we still believe that the Pipeline Authority is hitting the ACT for a 94.6 per cent cost rise. That is, in that year, the gas delivered to Moomba for the ACT at $4.4m was resold to AGL - AGL had to buy it; it had no other choice, as there is no other pipeline - for $8.56m. That is a huge margin of $4.16m profit. Where has the Federal Government gone with that money, when one has regard to a whole lot of funding and transitional arrangement issues with the Federal Government?
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