Page 2650 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 June 2012
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It is clear that, as a government, we must act now to minimise and reduce price pressures on families. The bill before us reflects the government’s ongoing commitment to ensure that budgets remain manageable. It also reflects our commitment to important reforms which facilitate and harness the capacity for national markets to deliver essential services to the community equitably and efficiently.
This legislation delivers a number of welfare-enhancing outcomes for ACT consumers. The legislation includes compulsory obligations on retailers and distributors to connect and supply all small customers at a standard price on a standard contract. This will ensure that no households are refused energy supplies where they are available. Under NECF, retailers will be required to develop and implement a hardship policy approved by the Australian Energy Regulator. This policy will help identify and assist customers who are experiencing difficulties in making payments. These hardship policies are designed to ensure early responses from retailers towards such customers and to assess more flexible and alternative payment options. Retailers will also be required to assess the appropriateness of any ongoing market contracts for hardship customers. This, combined with the government’s energy efficiency cost-of-living improvement legislation, will provide comprehensive support for low income households struggling with rising energy prices.
This brings me to another comment that Mrs Dunne made in her speech. She criticised the passage of the government’s energy efficiency cost-of-living improvement legislation. The ACT Liberals are the only Liberal Party group in the country that are opposing mandating energy companies from supplying energy efficiency services to their customers. The New South Wales government has retained legislation adopted by its predecessors that deliver these services. The Victorian Baillieu Liberal government has just expanded its energy efficiency legislation—its VEET legislation, as it is known—to cover small and medium business enterprises. The Victorian energy minister is on the record as stating that the VEET legislation, the equivalent of the territory’s energy efficiency cost-of-living improvement legislation, is the sort of carbon reduction legislation the government will support, because it reduces costs to consumers: it saves consumers money.
The Canberra Liberals are the only people in the country who oppose legislation that requires electricity companies to help their customers save money. It is the most extraordinary position for those opposite to adopt. They are out of sync with Ted Baillieu. They are out of sync with Barry O’Farrell. They are out of sync with their Liberal counterparts who recognise that energy efficiency legislation saves electricity customers money. It saves them money. They voted against the bill that will save 70,000 Canberra households, on average, over $300 a year on their electricity bill by the year 2015—$300 a year, ongoing, each and every year. Over the life of the scheme, the average saving to households is in the order of $2,000—$2,000. Those are the savings to energy customers.
The Canberra Liberals voted against it. They voted against legislation that their more sensible and considered counterparts in Victoria and New South Wales support, and
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