ELECTRICITY (ELECTRICITY SUPPLY INDUSTRY PLANNING COUNCIL) AMENDMENT BILL

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (17:45): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Electricity Act 1996. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (17:46): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

It is not very long ago that we were going through an incredible heatwave in Adelaide, and South Australia generally. One of the consequences of that heatwave was load shedding. That means that residences and businesses in certain suburbs found that, with no notice, their electricity was cut off as a way of reducing the overall pressure on the electricity system. Members will recall that there was considerable public consternation and debate, and people wanted to know how it was that their suburb or town was selected for load shedding, why it was that they were not notified, how the list of suburbs to be cut off was developed, and various other questions that go to explaining to people what happened and why.

In that process we had a number of political positions taken in relation to the lists and the question of whether the lists should be made public. The Premier, for example, on 4 February was reported in The Advertiser saying that he wanted the list of suburbs targeted for load shedding to be made public, and he made that call many times—on ABC Radio and FIVEaa as well. The next question that arose was: who is it who develops the lists, what sort of people are on that body and how do they go about making their decisions? That brings us to the South Australian Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council, the acronym for which is ESIPC.

The Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council is created under the Electricity Act 1996, and this body has a number of functions. However, I will just refer to the first three of those, and they are set out in section 6E of the act, as follows:

to develop overall electricity load forecasts in consultation with participants in the electricity supply industry and report the forecasts to the minister and the commission;

to review and report to the minister and the commission on the performance of the South Australian power system;

to advise the minister and the commission on matters relating to the future capacity and reliability of the South Australian power system.

So, clearly, it is within its bailiwick to be thinking about the ability of our electricity system to cope with the demands that are placed on it.

So, who are the people who make up this council? What are their qualifications and experiences, and what do they bring to this important task that they have? The planning council is governed by a board of directors, and the board consists of five members. Those five members have certain qualifications. Section 6G(3) of the Electricity Act provides:

The members must be persons who have, in the Governor's opinion, appropriate qualifications or expertise in relation to one or more of the following:

(a) power system planning, design, development or operation;

(b) electricity markets;

(c) financial management.

Subsection (4) goes on to provide:

Two of the members must be persons who are, in the opinion of the Governor, independent of the holders of licences authorising the generation of electricity or the operation of transmission or distribution networks.

However, at the end of the day, the membership of the board that runs the Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council are people involved in the electricity industry, and people might say that that is most appropriate. But there is a gap, and I think there is a serious lack of expertise in terms of the statutory qualifications. I make no comment on the office holders: they are not people whom I know, but it seems to me they share in common the fact that they are effectively industry people.

I see that there are two areas of expertise missing. The first is someone to advocate for the rights of consumers and, secondly, some expertise on the flip side of the supply coin, that is, demand management. I would also add a third one, that is, someone with knowledge of the supply side from the renewable energy sector. It seems to me we have a very one-sided planning council. There are no representatives of consumers, no-one whose chief focus is managing the demand rather than trying to augment the supply, and no-one from the new and emerging renewable energy sector.

My bill effectively seeks to plug that gap. I am proposing that the five-member board be expanded to six and that the collective qualifications the members need to have should include a person who has appropriate knowledge of and experience in advocating for or promoting the interests of electricity consumers, and also that at least one member of that new six-member board must have appropriate qualifications or experience in relation to either or both energy demand management and the renewable energy industry.

I have moved in this place previously for these types of expertise to be included in energy boards when we have discussed the national electricity law and also the national gas law. The main reason why it was rejected by both government and opposition was that they were designed to be national pieces of legislation where it was inappropriate for one state to try to mess with the arrangement that had been agreed to by ministers.

I did not accept that. But such an argument cannot apply here because this is our body. It is set up in South Australia under a South Australian act of parliament. We can have on it whatever areas of expertise and qualifications we want. So, it is a very modest reform but as to the link between my reform and what the Premier was asking for—which was for the list of the suburbs to be subject to load shedding to be made public—I can bet you that, if there was a consumer representative on the planning council, the issue of publicising the list would have had more of an airing than apparently it had under the current regime. If the Premier thinks that members of the public need to be kept more in the loop, what better way of doing it than to make sure that there is a consumer advocate on this important electricity planning council? So, it is a very modest measure, and I urge all members to support it.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. R.P. Wortley.

[Sitting suspended from 17:55 to 19:47]