Page 3166 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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This recommendation was largely driven by the experience with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s approach to the recommendations in its proposed plan for the basin. We know that the authority’s clear emphasis was on environmental elements, with much less consideration given to social and economic analysis.
It was this imbalance that caused significant public backlash and angst—indeed, utter rejection of the plan—across the many basin communities. We should learn from that experience. We should understand that decisions about prices for water and electricity, even issues surrounding competition policy or determinations in other inquiries undertaken by the ICRC, should not be based on one element in isolation to or out of balance with the others.
A triple bottom line approach that is emerging in financial reporting requires an analysis of the financial performance of organisations against economic, social and environmental criteria. Why can’t we have a process that embraces those elements, putting them in balance, then determining the factors that underpin that bottom line? But no; ACT Labor is willing to ignore the reality of modern principles and trends.
Of more concern is the propensity of this Labor government to ignore community expectations, so graphically illustrated in response to the Murray-Darling basin guide for the plan.
So I put it to the government once again: review the ICRC legislation, take the lead from your own Canberra plan, driven by the three interlinking elements. Do not expose yourself to the kind of response that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority got from the people who saw their lives, economies and communities so fundamentally threatened by the proposals in the plan. Let us see a modern approach to decision making by the ICRC. Let us ensure there is a balance given to the social, economic and environmental issues in decision making.
The other matter I want to briefly touch on is the so-called independence of the ICRC. Whenever the government is questioned on matters such as water and electricity prices, the government seeks to hide behind the independence of the ICRC. An example of this is recorded in Hansard on 15 February this year when Ms Gallagher, as Treasurer, was speaking in the discussion of a matter of public importance relating to cost of living pressures. Ms Gallagher said:
Prices for electricity in the ACT are not set by this government; they are set by the ICRC …
Mr Corbell on a number of occasions has said that the price for water is not set by the government but by the ICRC. That may be so, but the foundations—the drivers—for the determination of the ICRC come from this government. The government, for example, requires Actew Corporation to pay a dividend for 100 per cent of its net profit. There is no scope for working capital or building revenues or even putting some profit into the pockets of Canberrans by way of reduced prices. The government’s claim is quite simply a fallacy.
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