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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-05-15 Daily Xml
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NATIONAL ENERGY RETAIL LAW (SOUTH AUSTRALIA) (IMPLEMENTATION) AMENDMENT BILL

Final Stages

The House of Assembly disagreed to the amendment made by the Legislative Council and made the alternative amendment in lieu thereof as indicated in the following schedule:

Page 11, after line 26—Insert:

29A—Review

(1) The Commission must conduct a review of the operation of the National Energy Retail Law in South Australia after the expiry of 2 years from the date fixed under section 4.

(2) The review must focus on the impact of the National Energy Retail Law on consumers of energy and whether the implementation of the Law has—

(a) resulted in increased efficiencies; or

(b) adversely affected customer protection in pursuit of national consistency,

and may address such other matters as the Commission thinks fit.

(3) The Commission must prepare a report on the outcome of the review and provide a copy of the report to the Minister.

(4) The Minister must, within 6 sitting days after receiving a report under subsection (3), have copies of the report laid before both Houses of Parliament.

(5) The Commission must, between the date fixed under section 4 and the completion of the review under this section, publish, on a quarterly basis, statistics about the de-energisation of premises due to inability to pay energy bills during each quarter, unless the Commission is satisfied that the AER publishes comparable statistics on a quarterly basis.

Consideration in committee.

The Hon. G.E. GAGO: I move:

That the council does not insist on its amendment and agrees to the alternative amendment made by the House of Assembly.

The government considered that subsection (5) of the Hon. Mr Parnell's amendment put an unnecessary requirement on the Essential Services Commission of South Australia to duplicate a function which the Australian Energy Regulator intends to perform and therefore did not support this part of the amendment. Minister Koutsantonis negotiated an amendment to subsection (5) with the Hon. Mr Parnell which requires ESCOSA to publish statistics only in the event that the Australian Energy Regulator fails to do so. The government's amendment had full support in the other place, and I commend it to members.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Just for clarification, the alternative amendment is the one at the bottom of this schedule that we have just received.

The Hon. G.E. GAGO: Yes.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: My understanding, as the speaker here in the Legislative Council for the opposition, is that the opposition will agree to this alternative amendment. I discussed it this morning with the shadow minister, Mr Mitch Williams (member for MacKillop) and he has led me to believe that we are supporting this amendment. I indicate that we will support it.

The Hon. M. PARNELL: There was some confusion before because we, of course, had two electricity bills that we debated, one of which is more contentious than this one. I have only just seen the proposed wording, but it certainly does seem to reflect the discussion that I had with minister Koutsantonis, and that is to not require our state Essential Services Commissioner to publish certain data about the de-energisation of premises due to the inability to pay energy bills whilst that information was being collected by the national authority.

This amendment simply reflects that, if the national authority stops collecting the data then ESCOSA should, but we do not need to duplicate just for the sake of duplicating. I think this is a sensible compromise and I certainly support the motion that we not insist on our original amendment and that we support the alternative proposal.

Motion carried.

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