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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3742 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

What this drive for efficiency is also going to result in is cutbacks on maintenance and service. Despite all the rhetoric, consumers certainly will not benefit from this approach. The "public benefit" in terms of environmental and social outcomes is very difficult to define. As we have seen with ACTEW, since it was corporatised no-one has taken responsibility for developing thorough community service obligation frameworks for this new, corporatised body. The consumers who tend to benefit are big businesses, who can enter into individual deals at lower prices than the current approach allows.

I do not doubt that some innovations may come about under the new arrangements; but the question you have to ask is: Do we need the national electricity market? Do we need stock-market-like arrangements for electricity supply and demand in this country to bring about social and environmental innovations? I do not believe that we do. Mr Speaker, saving energy creates more jobs and saves more money than producing energy does. The electricity market reforms do not recognise this. What we need is not electricity distributors but energy service companies who have a mandate to sell renewable energy and energy conservation services. We need to be focusing on total bills for energy services, including the long-term costs and the environmental costs, not just electricity prices.

There are real concerns in terms of accountability in this package, also. The Bills we have before us today contain a number of very worrying clauses in terms of commercial confidentiality and access to information. As I have spoken about before, there is a very worrying trend in this country towards covering things up in the mantra of "commercial-in-confidence". Electricity retailers and utilities should be subject to the provisions of FOI, annual reporting, trade practices and ombudsman legislation.

In regard to the particular national scheme Bills, which we are looking at first this afternoon, these are the Bills which facilitate the establishment of the national electricity market in the ACT. The Government claims that this is not deregulation because a new, complex scheme of regulation will be put into place. That may be true to some extent; but we are very concerned that there are not adequate consumer, environmental or social safeguards. We are also very concerned that, despite this so-called regulation, many things will be able to be kept behind closed doors.

MR BERRY (Leader of the Opposition) (3.50): I want to put on record some details of processes being followed with this legislation. This legislation was introduced in the September sittings of the Assembly, and no effort has been made to explain to the community what is occurring as a result of it. We are told that what gave rise to this legislation was a signature by the former Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory some time ago. I think 1991 was the timeframe referred to. We were also told that Mrs Carnell signed an agreement with the Commonwealth and the other States on 11 April 1995 and that that set out the conditions in relation to the competition payments.

I have with me a copy of the attachment to the agreement, which says that the first payment would be made on the condition that the ACT entered into a range of conditions, that the second payment would set out another range of conditions, and that those payments would commence in 1999-2000. Mrs Carnell mentioned the other day that the second tranche, or second group of payments, was due shortly, which suggests to me that the program has been hurried up after the agreement was signed with the

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