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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3754 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

below 160 megawatt-hours of electricity. I think that is pretty generous when you consider what some States are doing in relation to this matter. I hope and trust that other members of the Assembly will support the right of this Assembly to review any decision to extend retail competition to below 160 megawatt-hours. In relation to competition for customers over 160 megawatt-hours - the ones who will benefit most from retail competition - the Government has indicated a timetable, and I trust that the Government will stick to that timetable in implementing competition. I am sure that I and other members of this place would be interested in how the introduction of a competitive market for those customers works out, and what the costs and benefits are.

Clearly, there are benefits in efficiency in competition at the retail level. The main benefit, of course, is the end to cross-subsidies, which will allow business customers to operate at more commercial rates. We, as a community, will pay a price for that in lower profitability of our own electricity company, ACTEW, who will suffer some reduction in profitability as a result of that. We can only hope that ACTEW will find ways of maintaining their profitability, perhaps by expanding their market share. But we need to acknowledge that, while there are benefits to the community in fairer pricing of electricity for large consumers, there is also a cost, and that cost is in lower profits by ACTEW Corporation as a result of the end of cross-subsidies. With those comments in mind, I reiterate that the Labor Party will be supporting the Electricity Supply Bill and we will be moving amendments to the Bill when we get to the detail stage.

MR MOORE (4.41): I rise very briefly to support the legislation and to express my appreciation for some advice that was provided to me in diagrammatic form by the public servants who are briefing us. It was particularly helpful for me in understanding what was going on. As it may well be that somebody who is reading Hansard in some years' time may be trying to understand what the heck this is all about, I seek leave to table the advice in diagrammatic form so that they will be able to go and get it and research it at will. I think that would make life much easier for them, as it did for me.

Leave granted.

MR MOORE: I thank members. I shall be supporting this legislation.

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services) (4.42), in reply: I must say that debates in this place sometimes take some bizarre turns. One of these days I will write my memoirs about some of the debates that we have had here. Everybody will have a nom de plume, too. Before winding up the debate on the Government's Bill, I would like to address a couple of the issues that Mr Whitecross raised in debate. First of all, he said that the Government was worried that somehow or other they were going to stuff up our program. I presume he meant "my program". Obviously, he has not been listening, because it is not our program; it is a national program. It is a national program that the Labor Party that he belongs to supported for all the years they were in government, signed off agreements on and gave the tick to various steps down through the process until a couple of years ago when they lost the ball and we had to pick it up for them.

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