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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (30 November) . . Page.. 3565 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Before this time utilities were generally owned and operated by government and therefore were regulated from within. With the move to encourage increased competition between utilities, the need was identified to separate the regulatory and commercial functions of utilities, with the regulatory functions staying with government and the commercial parts of the utilities being free to compete in the open market against other utilities and ultimately being able to be privatised.

This push towards the commercialisation of utilities came to a head in the ACT with the government's proposal in 1998 to sell off Actew. Around the same time, the government released a statement of regulatory intent for utilities to enable an open market for electricity to operate in the ACT. Since that time considerable work has been put into implementing this regulatory intent. The public consultation process was initiated on the government's proposed regulatory framework, and I know groups like the conservation council and ACTCOSS provided comments at various stages.

These bills were tabled earlier this year and have been the subject of an inquiry by the Planning and Urban Services Committee. I know that the committee recommended these bills be passed with a range of conditions. I am pleased that the government has picked up a lot of the recommendations of the committee in the amendments it is proposing to these bills.

There has already been much debate in the Assembly about the future of Actew, and members will know that I have grave doubts about the public benefits of the national electricity market, the privatisation of Actew and the commercialisation of water supply. Nevertheless, we now have the new ActewAGL organisation and other electricity suppliers coming into the ACT market. We also have new gas pipelines being built across the country and new companies entering the gas market.

The need for this regulatory regime to ensure that consumer interests and the environment are protected in this brave new world of competition is becoming more apparent. It seems that all the participants in the development of the new regulatory regime support in principle the introduction of this legislation so that we can move towards having a best practice regulatory framework in the ACT.

On this basis the Greens are prepared to support this legislation. However, concerns were raised about the detail in the documents. Because the package is so complex, I am aware that community groups did not have the resources to examine all the technical codes in this package, so to some extent we are going on faith that all these codes are adequate. Therefore, it is important that the overall regulatory framework be transparent and that the decision-making processes for dealing with particular companies and for setting standards be independent, thorough and accountable so that the community can have confidence that their interests are being looking after by relevant authorities.

A key player in this framework is the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission. It will be granting licences to utilities to operate in the ACT and determining industry codes of practice. It also has a role in advising the minister on the determination of technical codes, such as codes on health and safety issues. When the ICRC legislation was debated in this Assembly, I raised the concern that I did not think the membership of the commission was broad enough. There was too much focus on having members with economic and industry expertise and not enough on having

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