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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3706 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

responsibility to ensure that prices to the consumer are reasonable. The mechanism to make that so is required. That is the principal reason why the Government has brought forward this Bill. It is consistent with our moves to become part of the national grid system for, for example, gas and electricity.

Members have questioned some particular clauses of the Bill. Mr Whitecross spoke about the ability of a Minister to include an industry other than the electricity, gas and water industries in the field of responsibility of the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Commission. I do not know that we have any others in mind at the moment; but it does provide the ability for the Government, should the need arise, to provide that any other industry which falls within this general category should become subject to this Independent Pricing and Regulatory Commission.

Members have submitted various amendments. They will be dealt with in detail at the detail stage. The Government itself will move three amendments. One of them has to do with the question that Mr Whitecross raised about a Minister making a declaration that a new industry has become subject to and regulated by this legislation and whether that instrument should be disallowable. That is consistent with the view adopted by the Assembly in other areas where ministerial instruments are made; so we are providing that such an instrument should be disallowable and therefore is subject to debate and consideration by the Assembly. The others are more of a minor machinery nature. We will deal with them when we come to them.

But a couple of points need to be made before we conclude the debate in principle. I would like to stress, first of all, that this Bill does not impact upon or override such other legislation as the Freedom of Information Act. The commission will require businesses to provide commercial-in-confidence information in making its pricing determinations and the provisions of this Bill are to safeguard the legitimate interests of those businesses. It is provided on a commercial-in-confidence basis and it would be unreasonable to expect, through instruments such as the Freedom of Information Act, the commission to be obliged to make commercial-in-confidence information from one corporation available to another. It is consistent with the ACT's freedom of information legislation and it is consistent with similar legislation throughout Australia, but it does not override it.

Another matter which members may like me to explain is the reason why there is not a specific mechanism for appeals against a pricing decision made by the regulator. Firstly, the Bill allows a right of appeal, in the first instance, through the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act of 1989. A further right of appeal exists through the Federal courts. There are several good reasons why the Bill emphasises a procedural appeal and not a merits appeal. Appeals are very costly and can be of a frivolous nature just to prolong a decision to the financial advantage of the appellant and to the detriment of the consumer. It is also unlikely that a third-party appeals body would have personnel with the same level of technical expertise or more qualified to undertake a review than the regulator itself. To review the regulator's decision would mean undertaking the review again, repeating the whole costly procedure, and perhaps using less qualified and less experienced people to do so. One would have to question the merit of that.

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