Page 2569 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
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A matter of great concern to us is this question of the generation, transmission and distribution of electrical energy. At the moment we have a favourable position, a preferred position, under the agreement with the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Authority. That is under threat, and if we lose our preferred position it is going to cost the consumer in this Territory a good deal of money. That has been discussed elsewhere; it has been quantified; and we know the result. But that is only one part of the problem.
The other part is that there is a reticulation system and there are a number of generators of electrical energy along the eastern seaboard of Australia. If we have a common reticulation system and that is managed as simply a transportation system for electrical energy, and if we are a part of the management committee of that organisation, and we are - the Chief Minister has advised us that we will sit on the council of the management organisation for that national group - that gives us the flexibility to buy our electrical energy wherever it is cheapest and to have it transported to Canberra over the grid, which we partly own and partly control.
What happens if we lose our preferred position in the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Authority scheme? We have been excluded from the negotiating process on that matter. I tried to gain access to the consultation processes, and I know that the present Chief Minister has tried also, without success. We gradually broke it down. The Prime Minister finally agreed that we should participate. The Premier of New South Wales finally agreed that we should participate. The only person at the moment preventing our inclusion in those negotiations is the Premier of Victoria. I am afraid that she has never explained to me what her objections were, and in fairness I suspect that she probably has not explained them to the present Chief Minister. But the fact is that we have been excluded.
Even if we are ultimately excluded from those negotiations and if we lose our preferred position, the establishment of this national grid, with the ACT sitting on the management council, perhaps gives us the opportunity to compensate for that loss in some way by being able to buy our electrical energy wherever it is cheapest and simply use the national grid for its transportation into the ACT. So, there is great merit in this proposal and there is great value for us in being involved in the management of it.
There is a move to reform government trading enterprises at all levels, to set up a national monitoring system for the performance of these authorities. We are talking about such authorities, essentially Commonwealth authorities, as Telecom, Australia Post, the Australian National Line, the Federal Airports Corporation and the Pipeline Authority, which, of course, is of great interest to us also because we are a user of that pipeline authority. All of these things are of very much value, both directly and
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