Page 4073 - Week 11 - Thursday, 21 September 2017
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MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong—Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability, Minister for Justice, Consumer Affairs and Road Safety, Minister for Corrections and Minister for Mental Health) (11.22): I move:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
Today the government is presenting the Utilities Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. This bill makes amendments to the Utilities Act 2000 and the Utilities (Technical Regulation) Act 2014. Together, the Utilities Act and the Utilities (Technical Regulation) Act regulate utility services in the territory to achieve goals relating to the safe, reliable and efficient delivery of services and customer protections, and the protection of public safety and the environment. The regulatory scheme under the Utilities Act provides a licensing regime for the distribution of electricity services to customers.
Under the Utilities Act, the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission, or the ICRC, issues licences to major utility services to achieve the objectives set out in the act. These objectives range from the safe, reliable and efficient delivery of high quality utility services at reasonable prices to promoting competition in the provision of utility services and protecting the interests of consumers.
On the other hand, the Utilities (Technical Regulation) Act, or the UTR act in short, is aimed at regulating the infrastructure and technical components of utility service provision. The UTR act has as its objectives the safe, reliable and efficient delivery of utility services, the long-term serviceability and maintenance of utility networks, and the safe and reliable operation of services. The UTR act aims to protect the public, people working on the networks, and services, property and the environment.
The amendments that the government is introducing today seek to insert a general regulation-making power into each act that will enable classes of services to be removed from the regulatory schemes if certain conditions are met. A second set of amendments provides for the first use of the exemption power in relation to embedded electricity networks.
The purpose of the amendments inserting the general exemption regulation-making power is to provide that certain types of utility services do not need to comply with the regulatory schemes in each act. This will insert a necessary flexibility into determining the application of the regulatory framework. In the limited circumstances where a utility service falls under the definitions of the act but that level of regulation is not required for that class of services, the executive will be able to make an exemption regulation.
The regulatory schemes in both utility laws have a broad application. Both acts apply to “utility services”, which is a broadly defined term and captures, for present purposes, all electricity distribution services. In most situations, the broad definition of utility services is appropriate and these utility services require a regulatory response. However, some new technologies or new utility service delivery models are being captured by the definitions and falling under the regulatory schemes.
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