Page 5825 - Week 18 - Tuesday, 10 December 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
party that had been set up, from memory, by the first Follett Government. He said that the board of inquiry had recently - and this is August 1990 - responded with a series of "options". So, the Chief Minister, in reply, might like to bring us up to date. That is the last I can recall of it.
The Rally supports this Bill. It institutes a tax which was announced, in effect, by the Chief Minister in her budget. The public are aware of it and I have received no representations from constituents to oppose the imposition of this tax, nor have I received any representations from AGL Ltd. Members will recall that AGL Ltd is not slow to petition members of this Assembly on issues. It has done so in the past.
I draw members' attention to the fact that there are some empty, gaseous words in this Bill. The definition of "authorised distributor" includes "any person for the time being authorised by or under an Act to supply or distribute gas by means of a gas reticulation system". That is another exercise in optimism, because there is no such Act, to the best of my knowledge, that governs the supply, distribution and reticulation of gas. That is an aspect that the Chief Minister may wish to comment upon.
The Chief Minister is aware of continuing proposals to dispose of the national Pipeline Authority and its asset - its one and only big asset, which is the pipeline from Moomba across through Dalton and on to Sydney, where of course the authority has an exclusive carriage contract with AGL. But a different company in law, AGL Canberra Ltd, has the contract for the on-carriage of gas from Dalton to the ACT. It comes in somewhere north of Watson, to my recollection. I also recollect that there are potential economies to the ACT, depending on who purchases the Moomba line to Sydney and whether there will be a split ownership with a middle party securing the contract for carriage via the spur line into the Territory. They are issues that I enjoin the Government to continue its interest in. That will be in the interests of Canberra consumers.
If ACTEW becomes corporatised in one shape or other in due course, it will face the prospect of paying corporate taxes and levies in lieu of the arbitrary dividends that it pays at the present time. Clearly, AGL have a margin in their operation if they have agreed to absorb this levy. They have been good to this town in the past. They operate in difficult circumstances because they operate without the protection of easement laws and many other things as they go about putting in the gas reticulation system. To my knowledge, they have been very cooperative with the building industry on common trenching arrangements. No word has reached me that AGL would be disadvantaged in their service to customers by the imposition of this levy. We support the Bill for those reasons.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .