Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Under the oversight of the Ministerial Council on Energy, Australia has made substantial progress towards an efficient and effective national energy market over recent years. The Australian Energy Market Amendment (Gas Legislation) Bill 2006 represents a significant legislative step towards a national regime for the regulation of gas pipeline infrastructure complete with national regulatory and national rule-making bodies. This is crucial to Australia’s future economic energy security and economic growth.

The Ministerial Council on Energy will apply the new national gas law and national gas rules in all participating jurisdictions by 30 June this year. The national gas law will reduce the regulatory burden on industry, improve service provider certainty and protect long-term interests of consumers by introducing a new light-handed form of regulation for gas pipelines. It will empower the Australian Energy Regulator as the national regulator for gas access to improve the consistency of regulatory decision making, enable merit review by the Australian competition tribunal of key regulatory decisions, introduce strict requirements for timely regulatory decisions, increase information transparency and maintain incentives for investment in new pipelines established by the Ministerial Council on Energy in June 2006.

The new gas access regime will be underpinned by lead legislation enacted in the South Australian parliament. Early next year, the South Australian parliament will enact a national gas act and the national gas law will be the schedule to that act. The reformed gas regime is established primarily in the national gas law, which will be established in South Australian law and applied through application acts in all other participating jurisdictions except for Western Australia, which will pass mirror legislation.

A draft of the national gas law was released for consultation on 7 November last year prior to the Ministerial Council on Energy meeting agreeing to a final version. This bill amends the Australian Energy Market Act 2004, which will now apply the national gas law in the Commonwealth’s jurisdiction, ensuring that the new gas access regime will apply throughout Australia, including offshore areas and external territories. Under the current gas access regime, nine different regulators make decisions. That leads to uncertainty and inconsistency in the application of regulations. Under the new national gas law, the regulation of all gas transmission and distribution pipelines—except in Western Australia—will be undertaken by the Commonwealth through the Australian Energy Regulator. This will obviously lead to a more efficient and consistent regulatory decision-making process.

The bill will empower the Australian Energy Regulator and two other Commonwealth bodies—the National Competition Council and the Australian Competition Tribunal—to take crucial decisions within the new gas access regime. The bill amends the Trade Practices Act 1974 to confer new functions and powers and impose new duties on these three Commonwealth bodies when applying the national gas law. The Australian Energy Regulator, the National Competition Council and the Australian Competition Tribunal will have important roles in overseeing and reviewing the national gas law to boost competition while protecting the interests of gas consumers. All those decisions in all jurisdictions will be reviewable by the Australian Competition Tribunal to better protect the interests of both consumers and investors in the gas sector.

This bill allows the greenfield pipelines incentives in the current gas access regime to continue to operate in the new gas access regime. These incentives support new investment in pipeline infrastructure within Australia or crossing our territorial waters to other countries, increasing Australia’s energy security and benefiting Australian gas consumers. The national gas law will also allow those companies owning pipelines subject to competition to negotiate commercially and economically efficient outcomes with access seekers with direct involvement by the regulator. Only where negotiations fail will the Australian Energy Regulator arbitrate to resolve the access dispute. Through this bill, the Commonwealth is taking a legislative lead in establishing this regime. This process has the full support of the Ministerial Council on Energy and represents a bipartisan, cooperative and national approach to regulating access to gas pipeline infrastructure. The national gas law is currently the subject of a rigorous consultation process engaging all of the relevant stakeholders. Officials from the Ministerial Council on Energy are currently considering submissions made concerning the national gas law and will be finalising legislation taking into account all of those issues raised by stakeholders.

As members in this place know, I hail from Darwin in the Northern Territory. We passed legislation through this place only this week in relation to the Greater Sunrise unitisation agreement between Australia and East Timor.

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