Page 2799 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 1991
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Electricity Accounts
MR STEVENSON: My question is to Mr Connolly. Is the Minister aware that the owner of the computer company Digit Design Research and Development in Fyshwick suffered damage to a hard disc drive in his computer because the business's electricity was cut off? The proprietor received his account, and a reminder, and failed to pay both. While it may be that there is no excuse for that, there are other circumstances involved. Electricity is of special importance for businesses in the computer field. Power failure can have drastic results, particularly the loss of information. Does Mr Connolly feel that it would be a far more reasonable and sensible approach to phone clients as a standard operating procedure, should they not have paid their accounts, with the suggestion that their electricity will be cut off immediately if it is not, and perhaps finding out whether there is some valid reason, through sickness or something else, why they have not yet paid the account?
MR CONNOLLY: When the question started about whether I was aware of some damage done to a computer at Digit Design at Fyshwick, I thought the computer might have been on the route 764 bus that Mrs Nolan was concerned about and might have fallen off a seat of the bus in that same incident. My level of command of the detail of the portfolio is obviously not what it should be. I am not aware of this individual company's complaints. A company is expected to pay its bills, as is any ordinary consumer. ACTEW is not in the practice of ringing up every company to remind them that their bills are overdue. There is a normal practice of a demand and a reminder going out.
If there were a case for employing people to telephone consumers and remind them that their bills were overdue, I would be more concerned to phone recipients of social security benefits, for whom the consequence of cutting off power is a loss of heating and lighting to a family, than corporate individuals, who really ought be able to arrange their affairs so that they pay their accounts. Obviously, one regrets that this company, because it failed to pay its power bill, lost information when its power was cut off; but, really, corporate consumers, as much as the individual, ought to be in a position where they pay their bills, and perhaps more so than the individual consumers.
MR STEVENSON: I ask a supplementary question. Does the Minister believe that it is an unfair playing field when government instrumentalities can take that drastic action, when that is not the normal situation in business? If the Government fail to pay their bills on time, the public cannot take similar action.
MR CONNOLLY: There is an element of validity in Mr Stevenson's last remarks about an unlevel playing field. The former Government, to its credit - and we have carried this on - sent a reference to the Community Law Reform
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