ELECTRICAL PRODUCTS (ENERGY PRODUCTS) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 23 March 2011.)

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:37): I indicate that I will be the lead speaker for the opposition on this bill. The Electrical Products (Energy Products) Amendment Bill will amend and rename the Electrical Products Act 2000 and amend the Gas Act 1997. The bill will introduce minimum energy performance standards and labelling for gas products. Minimum energy performance standards are already used for electrical products. This bill will ensure that similar standards will now apply to gas products.

The bill arises from the decision of the Ministerial Council for Energy to bring the existing industry sponsored gas labelling scheme into a consistent regulatory framework. The bill will extend the Electrical Products Act 2000 to cover gas products, both natural gas and LPG, and in the future other energy products, such as solar, will also be included. It renames the act the Energy Products (Safety and Efficiency) Act.

The bill extends the Governor's proclamation powers to energy products rather than simply electricity products and allows the Governor to declare a certification body to certify energy products as opposed to electrical products. The bill enables the technical regulator to issue public warnings on unsafe products and installation practices.

Under the new Electricity Products Act 2000, authorised persons will be renamed authorised officers, and the information-gathering powers of authorised officers have been extended to bring them into line with other acts such as the Electricity Act 1996. The extended powers include the ability of authorised officers to stop and inspect a vehicle (that means break into, if necessary) if it is suspected that products contravening the act have been loaded onto that vehicle. The authorised officer would need a warrant issued by a magistrate to perform that action. The bill also provides authorised officers with the power to seize products pursuant to a seizure order and have them tested.

The bill modifies the privilege against self-incrimination, and I will ask the minister about that clause in committee. The government alleges that the existing self-incrimination privilege has been used by traders to avoid answering questions. It is proposed that the privilege will be modified with respect to safety issues. It will be retained for natural persons including directors of a body corporate but removed for bodies corporate. The bill also provides a grandfathering period to enable traders to clear existing stocks. This will remain at six months as already in the Electricity Products Act 2000.

I conclude my remarks there and indicate that the opposition will be supporting the passage of the bill.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (15:42): I, too, rise on the opposition's side to support the Electrical Products (Energy Products) Amendment Bill. I note that this bill will introduce minimum energy performance standards and labelling for gas products. I note this is already used in relation to electrical products and, when this bill is enacted, it will ensure that similar standards will apply to gas products.

I would like to give an overview of an issue with gas appliances, especially for people who live in the country. I do not think a place like Coomandook is that far from the big smoke, being about 130 or 140 kilometres from the centre of Adelaide. I went through the process of installing a gas heater at the farm when my father was living there. He was about 86 and I was living down the road in a rented farmhouse. I could tell he was struggling to deal with loading wood into the combustion heater so I said, 'I'm going to fix it, Dad; I'll fix it right up. We will get a gas heater and away we'll go.'

I think it was at Ultimate Heating in Adelaide where I found a good gas heater. We organised it and had it installed, once I found a plumber who would come out from Murray Bridge to help put the flue kit and everything in. Then we hooked it up to the normal outside household gas bottles that weigh about 85 kilos. What we did not know at the time was how much gas this monster would eat.

The Hon. M.F. O'Brien: Put it back on the wood fire.

Mr PEDERICK: Having moved back to the farm in the last 2½ years, I find it very tempting to get the chainsaw out, not just for the wood. The exercise would not hurt either; it is just finding the time. We had twin bottles hooked up outside the lounge room where the gas heater was installed and we found that we would get through one of them in about a fortnight.

Apart from being 86 and a little infirm at the time, as he still is but a little bit older at 91, my dad could not move the bottles. With me being involved in here, it was difficult to be around all the time to shift the bottles. So, I thought I would go through the process of putting in one of those gas bullets that you see at the service stations. That is a difficult exercise to arrange.

You get hold of the gas companies and, for a start, none of them would entertain the idea. I found out what the issue was, and I congratulate Tony Henika from Origin, who finally came on board with me. He said, 'Well, your problem is, Adrian, you're not on a gas delivery route.' For some reason Coomandook may as well be at Birdsville, because the route coming down from the city turns off at Tailem Bend and heads out the Mallee Highway, and the South-East gas delivery route only comes to Coonalpyn, so I am in the black hole. It was an interesting exercise.

I said to Tony Henika, 'Listen, Tony, you tell me how it's going to work. I know that means money,' and it did. Anyway, Tony came up with a gas price per litre so that we could have gas delivered. It is a hell of a lot more than you would pay for gas delivered in the trunk network in the city, but it is probably comparable with the price of buying bottles and hooking them up. You have to have an audit every year. You have to have a safe work ticket, which is fine. I think that is about $150. Origin found me a little bullet that holds about a tonne of gas legally, and we got that delivered. Then I had to get my fencing contractor to put in all the barriers so you cannot back into it, and I had some old railway iron posts that did the job admirably.

As you can imagine, by now the costs are starting to mount and the chainsaw is looking a lot more attractive, but it does not end there. We got that all worked out, and it was great to have the gas supply for my dad who was living at the farm at the time. We see that copper prices have gone through the roof now, but then we had to plumb the copper into the house from the big tank, which we did. I am not going to tell the house how much it cost me in the end, but I can say that the whole project was a few thousand dollars, which was a few more than I imagined.

What I am getting at is that it will be very helpful, with a bill like this, for people to know the approximate energy use for an appliance so that they can fully evaluate what they need to do when fitting any gas appliances, whether it be combustion heaters, water heaters, or gas stoves, which I believe are certainly better to cook on than electrical stoves. It will certainly help consumers make value decisions when installing gas. Even though it did hurt the hip pocket a bit, it is nice to get up in the morning, hit a button and everything lights up in front of you.

Mr Williams: What are you talking about now?

Mr PEDERICK: I am talking about gas, Mitch. Before we digress, I will leave it there.

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN (Napier—Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Energy, Minister for the Northern Suburbs) (15:49): I have listened with keen interest, and I think dad got off quite lightly. I would not have even given him the chainsaw; I would have just sharpened the axe for him. It was a dutiful son looking after his dad, and it is wonderful that he lights up the way that he does in the morning. With those remarks, we will conclude the debate and get onto an examination of the various clauses.

Bill read a second time.

Committee Stage

In committee.

Clauses 1 to 14 passed.

Clause 15.

Mr WILLIAMS: I do not think the committee will take a long. I just want to take the opportunity to raise an issue, which I raise from time to time when bills are going through this committee, with regard to the general powers of authorised officers.

We continually get what I can only describe as draconian powers given to a whole range of authorised officers performing a whole range of functions under a significant amount of the statute law of the state. We are continually given the excuse that, 'This is just a standard set of powers, and we have it in this act and we have in that act, and it won't cause a problem.' From my experience—and I have been here for a few years now, but it is not aeons—we have, in a creeping fashion, given more and more powers to authorised officers.

I do not have a problem, per se, with authorised officers having adequate powers to perform their functions. What I do recognise, though, is that every time we give another power to an authorised officer we are impeding or impinging upon the rights of citizens. In this particular case, I really do ask the minister: how serious are the issues with regard to administering the existing legislation, and what grave ills does he experience—and I say 'experience', not expect? I want to know what experiences and what ills we are trying to rectify with this legislation.

I particularly draw the committee's attention to what will become new section 11—General powers of authorised officers, subsection (7), which will remove the right of a person to remain silent. If a person who believes they might be incriminating themselves is forced to provide information, the caveat is that:

...if the person is a natural person, the information or document so given or produced will not be admissible in evidence against the person in proceedings for an offence...

Notwithstanding that, if that particular piece of information cannot be admissible in the proceedings against the person, the person still may incriminate themselves, and we are removing one of the fundamental tenets of living in a free and open democratic society. We do this, I think, far too regularly. I continue to argue against it. It is not the sort of power that our police enjoy when they are investigating criminal matters, but we give these powers to authorised officers in a whole range of statute law. I ask the minister: on what basis is it deemed necessary that we incorporate this power for authorised officers under this piece of legislation?

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN: I thank the member for MacKillop for the question. I have just been informed by my officer that there was an instance in Victoria quite recently where a gas device did not meet specification and, as a result, two children died from carbon monoxide poisoning. I must admit the instances are rare, but when they do occur they are of significant consequence, and for that reason we believe that the powers contained within the bill are required. They would be used infrequently but, when required to be used, there would be a compelling reason, such as the death of two children by virtue of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Mr WILLIAMS: Minister, are you telling the house that, if the Victorian authorised officers—I am not sure whether they have authorised officers in Victoria—or their equivalent had had these powers, the deaths of these two children would have been prevented?

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN: No; the intent of the clause is to allow the investigating officer (the regulator) to compel the supplier of the equipment to indicate, most importantly, where similar devices have been installed so they can be removed and also to advise where the uninstalled devices are stored (whether in a warehouse or, in some instances, in the boot of a car). This sets out to ensure that, once a defect is noted—and hopefully it is not as a result of a tragic accident—and as soon as a device is found to be faulty, there is power to compel the installer or the seller to inform officers of other installations.

Mr WILLIAMS: I am not going to hold the committee any longer. The minister has given an explanation which, to my mind, is totally inadequate in making the case for having these powers in this legislation. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine a situation where there has been a tragedy and a person who has the knowledge of where a risk may arise in other circumstances, through similar equipment, would withhold that information. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine that we would need this power to extract that relevant information.

Having said that, I think this is a classic case of using a sledgehammer to crack open an acorn. What disturbs me is that this will now be used as an example to say, 'It is in this piece of legislation, therefore, we can justify putting it into another piece of legislation,' and so it flows on. I think it is an outrage that, as a parliament, we have accepted that we should be investing these powers in authorised officers.

I repeat: we do not give these powers to police officers, who go through considerable training, who are investigating criminal matters, and who still manage to get convictions. It is my suspicion that the reason that we are being asked by the bureaucracy to give these powers is not about saving lives but it is about getting much easier convictions after the fact. I think the parliament should question that, and certainly, for as long as I am in this place, I will continue to question it.

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN: The official has advised me—and the official runs a team of eight auditors who are responsible for checking on the quality of electrical installations and gas installations—that it is his experience that if able, people will claim privilege, that there is a general reluctance to expose a scale of inappropriate installation or inadequate equipment. That is the officer's experience, and if we look to New South Wales in particular, in terms of the installation of the ceiling batts, we can see what shoddy workmanship and inexperience can bring in its wake. The last thing that we want is a couple of deaths to prove that this particular section in the bill is required.

Clause passed.

Remaining clauses (16 to 21), schedule and title passed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Third Reading

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN (Napier—Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Energy, Minister for the Northern Suburbs) (16:02): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.