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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3703 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The Greens support the need for effective competition in the marketplace, particularly to avoid one or two companies dominating a particular market sector. In the case of the electricity, water and gas monopolies - ACTEW and AGL - there is definitely a need for price regulation to prevent these companies from exploiting their market domination to the detriment of consumers. For example, the work of the Energy and Water Charges Commissioner in investigating the price structure of ACTEW provided a good opportunity for ACTEW to be made publicly accountable for its pricing policy. While we support the Bill in principle, we do have some particular concerns with some aspects of the Bill and will be putting forward amendments at the detail stage of the debate. At this stage I will just flag the areas.

A concern we have in the whole competition policy debate is that we do not want the primary focus on the price of services to overtake the need for pricing policy to take into account environmental and social factors and to be structured in a way that ensures the achievement of environmental improvements and social justice. We also want more public involvement in the investigations undertaken by the commission, to give the public a greater opportunity to put to the commission their views on what they believe are appropriate pricing policies. Finally, we are concerned with the provisions in the Bill relating to the restrictions on public access to so-called confidential information provided to the commission. We are particularly concerned about the restrictions on access to information obtained from government agencies or corporations regarding their regulated services. Such restrictions make it very difficult for this Assembly to effectively scrutinise the actions of Territory-owned corporations, which it is our job to do. I will be moving an amendment which will at least ensure that in any commission report we will be aware of what information we are not getting access to. Recently, I was not able to get access to the contract between ACTEW and Yallourn Energy. That is a very good example of how there could be greater accountability if we had access to that information.

I will talk in more detail later about my amendments, but I do want to qualify this by saying that the amendment I will be putting regarding access to so-called commercial-in-confidence information is only the beginning of the work that needs to be done in this area. One of the first things I intend to do in the next Assembly is to ensure that a committee is set up to look at this issue, because we really do have to have a much clearer idea of exactly what sort of information can be legitimately called commercial-in-confidence and which information we could access quite easily without causing any real danger. At the moment, it is like a sacred symbol that means nothing is available, and that is not necessarily the case. The inquiries that have been undertaken and are currently being undertaken around Australia have shown and are showing quite clearly that it is possible to develop criteria by which to judge which information can be legitimately called commercial-in-confidence.

MR MOORE (11.46): I support this legislation because I think that, as we move to competition policy and it becomes more and more a part of the way we operate around Australia, it is important that we have an appropriate and independent pricing and regulatory commission. Setting up a broad general commission is, to me, an acceptable way of dealing with the issue. Currently, it would apply, clearly, to electricity and gas. There is a proposal that water fall into this category. It seems to me that there are other possibilities of monopolies operating. Telecommunications is another possibility, taxis are yet another possibility and there could be a series of others.

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