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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (8 March) . . Page.. 685 ..
MR KAINE (continuing):
is a not insignificant saving of as much as $50 to $60 off each electricity bill. In the case of AGL, however, the available rebate on gas consumption is very much less generous. In fact, it amounts only to a few dollars off each bill. Minister, what arrangements do you intend to put in place to ensure that the level of ACTEW's community service obligations with respect to age pensioner rebates will remain intact in the event that the joint venture with AGL does proceed?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, this is a good question, and it is one that I think does need to be addressed fairly at this stage of the negotiation about this potential partnership. ACTEW does offer concessions to pensioners in the ACT and to other recipients of certain concessions. I think veterans of certain sorts are entitled to special concessions at a certain level. There is a range of concessions available which are paid not directly by ACTEW but by the Government via the Department of Education and Community Services. Those concessions are paid to ACTEW in the form of a community service obligation, a CSO, which in turn ACTEW passes on for the purposes for which it has been given to those particular classes of beneficiaries. The concessions which AGL offers are, Mr Kaine suggests, quite rightly, lower than the ones that ACTEW offers, but, of course, it is not actually ACTEW who is offering them. It is actually the Government which offers them.
It is the Government's intention that there should be no overall reduction in the benefit being offered to the ACT community, particularly to the classes of people that Mr Kaine refers to, via the CSO scheme operating through ACTEW. Of course, with the Utilities Bill, which is before the house at the moment, there is the capacity to enforce the situation whereby not only ACTEW but also private sector utilities in the ACT such as AGL will be obliged to offer concessions or rebates to its customers, again on the basis that we fund those in the same way that we fund the benefits that ACTEW provides, ie, through a CSO payment to that particular utility.
There may be a temptation, I suppose, to want to try to synchronise the level of concessions which are being offered, particularly if there is a single bill that is going to consumers, Mr Speaker, but, as far as the Government is concerned, that will not be achieved by lowering the concession that we offer to the level that ACTEW is currently offering to people or synchronising it in that way.
It is our view that we should continue to provide those sorts of benefits to the ACT community. The matter is subject to review. There is, in fact, a review going on at the moment into the nature and the delivery of CSOs to the community generally. I believe, Mr Speaker, that we should commit ourselves to maintenance of the level of support to the community through the CSOs, and the merger with ACTEW or joint venture should not affect that situation.
MR KAINE
: I want to ask a supplementary question. Thank you for that, Minister. You mentioned the enabling legislation that allows this to occur, but I am more interested, and I am sure the current recipients are, in what is the mechanism by which it will be ensured. During the joint venture negotiations between the two corporations, can such community service obligations be specifically provided for by item and detail in the final agreement
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