Wednesday, 20 March 2019

 Ms HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (11:49): As I was saying prior to the interruption for question time, the Essential Services Commission Amendment (Governance, Procedural and Administrative Improvements) Bill 2019 makes a series of amendments and improvements to the way that we conduct and regulate essential services through the Essential Services Commission. I think I had raised some of the particular and most important changes that this legislation is going to deal with. Of course, as I have previously said, this is a bill that had already been in the Parliament and had passed through the lower house, but it was held up in the upper house, the election date arrived and it could no longer be proceeded with. It had to be introduced again and go through the motions.

This bill is very similar to that 2018 bill. There are a few technical changes around some timing and so on, but in essence it still has completely the same intent—that is, to tighten up, improve and make sure that we have an Essential Services Commission that really does look after consumers and to make sure that we have a strong regulatory framework in which the essential services of the state must conduct their business.

We know, because we have had to introduce other legislation, that since the privatisation of electricity, for example, profit comes before the needs and requirements of the consumer and households in terms of electricity supply. There needs to be strong regulation because it cannot be the profit motive that determines how and when people receive essential services such as electricity, water and gas. These are all fundamental human needs that we must make sure people have access to in order for them to live proper and productive lives.

While there were some smaller amendments around things like the minister being able to appoint a person to act as chairperson, the bill also deals with some of the bigger things—for example, having reviews and also replacing the appeals panel so that VCAT can be used; rather than a separate parallel system for reviewing decisions it can all be done in a more central way through the VCAT process. There has been legislation previously debated in this house this term around the Game Management Authority, or fishing, where rather than having a separate or isolated process for decision-making, it was decided it could all be centralised within the VCAT structure that is already there. You would hope that would lead to some really good efficiencies as well as a more streamlined and consistent approach when reviewing the decisions of government bodies.

Some of the other amendments are around tightening up the public reporting on market structures and performance. The consumer has the right to have full disclosure and full knowledge of the market—whether it be transport, the ports or electricity—to ensure that, if they want to, they will be able to find out how the market structures are working and what the performance is to enable them to make informed decisions on individual companies or the industry as a whole. Of course the government itself very much needs to have this information so that it can also look at the sorts of policies, drivers and regulatory frameworks that it may or may not want to change into the future.

In the Thomastown electorate we have a lot of new infrastructure going in, which is fantastic. I think in the last four years, in the last term of government, the Andrews Labor government invested something like $600 million on infrastructure. One of the issues that we had was with utility companies not coming in to move power poles or change gas pipes in a timely way. The Essential Services Commission was trying to look into this issue to see whether there were some levers within that it could use in order to encourage—or maybe more than encourage—some of these companies to do the right thing by Victorians and make sure that they prioritised work on public infrastructure in the public interest.

I think we will be looking at legislation at a later time that may address this issue, but originally it was the Essential Services Commission that was able to look into this and investigate what could and should be done in order to provide proper services for much-needed public infrastructure. While this legislation is not, I suppose, the big attention or headline grabber, it is a bill that is very important for the proper running of this state.

 Ms HENNESSY (Altona—Attorney-General, Minister for Workplace Safety) (11:56): I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.