Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I look forward to your contribution, Senator Birmingham. It is important that we clear this up. The government’s stated intent was always to ensure that utilities could not resupply the broader community in a retail sense. We believe that to be fair. It is what we set out to achieve, and we believe the original legislation did that. But the point has been made by a range of senators that the industry did have concerns that this was not clarified enough and we welcome the support of the chamber in clarifying this to ensure that people do not feel that the legislation is deficient. We welcome the opportunity to ensure that the government’s aims are absolutely clear in this bill.