Energy Legislation

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy) (14:08): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Recently, the government announced a number of measures to increase energy market competition, drive down costs for businesses and consumers and reduce carbon emissions. We have made our intention clear—that we want to put the power back in the hands of consumers. Today, I am pleased to advise the house that we are giving notice of our intention to introduce bills which will assist this goal.

One bill will empower the Australian Energy Regulator to undertake a wholesale market monitoring and reporting function. This will ensure that stakeholders have greater transparency around how the wholesale electricity market is functioning and ensure we have the information necessary to respond if any features of the wholesale electricity market are found to be detrimental to effective competition.

The other bill will help ensure that our network businesses are spending no more than is necessary to deliver electricity to consumers. The Australian Energy Regulator has already been tasked with preparing performance reports of electricity and gas network service providers to provide transparency and benchmarking of the efficiency of these businesses. This bill will empower the Australian Energy Regulator to collect information from the businesses and publish data necessary to benchmark the performance of the businesses.

Annual efficiency performance reports by the Australian Energy Regulator will enable stakeholders to track performance over time as well as enable meaningful comparison of network service providers. It will expose network service providers to higher degrees of public scrutiny through efficient practices as reflective of competitive markets. South Australian consumers rely on private operators for the delivery of our electricity. These new bills will ensure that there is greater transparency in how they behave and operate to ensure South Australian consumers are provided with the competitive, reliable electricity services that they deserve.