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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (5 November) . . Page.. 3634 ..

National Competition Policy - Water and Electricity Market Reform

MS TUCKER: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Chief Minister. Mrs Carnell, can you inform the Assembly what opportunity the Government gave the community forum on competition policy to have input into the development of, or to comment on, the legislation which the Assembly is due to debate this week on competition reforms in water and electricity? If they were involved, can you please indicate how they were involved and what comments were made, and detail how the Government facilitated their involvement; that is, with documentation, copies of the draft legislation or whatever?

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, with regard to the legislation that is on the table this week - which actually is Mr Kaine's legislation, not my legislation; so Mr Kaine may like to - - -

Ms Tucker: I thought you were answering questions on competition policy.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Kaine may like to add something to this. Mr Speaker, the legislation that is on the table this week is model legislation - legislation that is being passed around Australia. One of the pieces of legislation is with regard to having our own pricing commissioner. As you know, in the past, we have used the New South Wales commissioner. As it has been set up to date, that can deal only with ACTEW pricing and, as we know, as a result of the national grid, other companies will inevitably be in the ACT, and that particular piece of legislation will go somewhat broader.

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, on a point of order: I would have liked to see the Chief Minister attempt to answer the question and tell us how she facilitated the forum considering these issues, which was the guts of the question that Ms Tucker asked.

MRS CARNELL: That is what I am getting to.

Mr Berry: How about trying to answer it and let us know? I am interested in what facilitation efforts the Government put into having the forum consider the issue.

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order. Continue, Chief Minister.

MRS CARNELL: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I thought it was important to outline what the legislation was about and how that then fitted with the terms of reference of the forum, because obviously the forum would not look at something that was not within its actual terms of reference. Mr Speaker, I might be wrong; but, on my understanding, the forum was to look at the impact on the community of national competition policy, to look at how national competition policy and the sorts of things that were put in place affected the community, and to give feedback to government on those sorts of things. Mr Speaker, it was not my view that the forum's job was to determine whether we should have a national competition policy or whether the agreements - that have been entered into predominantly by Ms Follett but now by my Government - should or should not go ahead. The fact is that we have, or Ms Follett had, already committed the ACT to a particular path.

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