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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (2 March) . . Page.. 490 ..

I have put up this motion to refer the Utilities Bill 2000 to the Planning and Urban Services Committee because I believe that this legislative package that establishes a regulatory framework for electricity, gas, water and sewerage services in the ACT is a very significant and complicated package. It needs detailed examination by this Assembly and also the opportunity for the community to provide comment on its adequacy.

It is interesting to note that the Treasurer said in the presentation speech for the Bill that officials have worked for 18 months on developing this package. It should therefore be quite reasonable for the Government to expect this Assembly to take a bit of time to review this legislation rather than voting on it after only a few weeks.

Members would be aware that this package had its genesis in the moves by the Government at the end of 1998 to privatise ACTEW. The ABN AMRO study found significant gaps in the laws that currently regulate ACTEW. It recommended that a full regulatory framework was needed regardless of the ownership of ACTEW.

Some of these gaps are as follows: There are no customer service standards for water or sewerage supply, and limited standards for electricity supply; there is no independent right of complaint about service standards to a body that can order ACTEW to take action; there are no legally enforceable technical and safety standards for ACTEW's equipment; there is a lack of commonality in approach to regulation across different utilities; and the current regulations are not totally appropriate to the situation where there is more than one provider retailing electricity in the ACT.

I would add a couple more: The need to ensure that strong environmental safeguards are in place, including requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity supply, and the need for regulations regarding public access to information about the operations of the utilities. I also think we need to look at how community service obligations will be handled in a multi-utility environment. There may be other regulatory issues that need to be addressed as well once we look at the detail of the package.

I do not think anyone in this Assembly would say that we do not need better regulation of these essential services. It is more a question of whether we think that what the Government is proposing is adequate enough to protect the public interest across all these areas.

It is interesting to note that there was a flurry of activity about the regulatory framework at the time the Government put forward the proposal to privatise ACTEW. The Government issued a statement of regulatory intent in November 1998 with the intention of having legislation passed in the first half of 1999. Some consultation meetings were held with community groups, but, once the decision was taken in the

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