Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS
Wednesday, 1 June 2011 COUNCIL 1637
I refer to my letter to you of 27 July 2010 regarding the
Legislative Council’s order of 23 June 2010 seeking the
production of documents relating to smart meters.
As I foreshadowed in my letter, the government has
attempted to refine the scope of the order. However, the
language used in the order is at such a level of ambiguity, and
the subject matter so broad, that it has not been possible to
identify the subject of the order with any particularity.
The reference to ‘all documents’ in the order means that
preparing the government’s response would require a
substantial diversion of the department’s time and resources
and take many months to complete. Indeed, there are likely to
be over 4000 documents relevant to this order.
Consequently, the government invites the Council to refine
the scope of the order with a view to enabling the government
to respond. I otherwise trust that the Council will not insist on
the government responding to the order in its current form.
The government did not produce the documents before
the Parliament was prorogued at the end of last year.
The Attorney-General identified in his letter that the
request involved several thousand documents.
The government is happy to respond to the house, but
the timetable for production is ambitious, to say the
least. I note that yesterday the Minister for Energy and
Resources, the Honourable Michael O’Brien, released a
smart meter issues paper for public consultation, which
is a significant step forward and something which the
previous government should have done. I welcome and
congratulate the minister on his releasing the issues
paper and seeking to have positive engagement with the
community on this important project. With those
words, the government does not oppose the motion
moved by Mr Barber.
Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria) — The
opposition will be supporting Mr Barber’s motion. This
is an important issue. The motion simply makes some
reasonable requests for documents that relate to
important projects. This is the type of request that was
perfectly acceptable to government members when they
were on the opposition benches.
The advanced metering infrastructure project is an
important project. It was initiated as part of the Council
of Australian Governments discussions when John
Howard was the Prime Minister. In other countries
advanced metering has been shown to provide relief
and benefit to people where it has previously been
rolled out. The experience in Canada and the United
Kingdom, if my memory serves me correctly, is that the
installation of these kinds of devices places downward
pressure on the cost of living and billing because
consumers have at their disposal a whole lot more
information on their use habits.
There has been great success in increasing community
awareness leading to rapidly reduced water
consumption. It has been my view for a long time that
this is one way to tackle energy prices for consumers
and to encourage measures that will promote the smart
use of energy in a way similar to the system that has
realistically and practically had a great impact on water
use. There are some good lessons for us from that.
Mr Barber’s motion seeks to explore some of the issues
around smart meters and this important project. We
support Mr Barber’s endeavour to do so through this
motion.
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) —
Mr O’Donohue was in the starting blocks, and then he
came out in slow motion like the Six Million Dollar
Man, and slow motion is exactly what we are going to
get. Members heard Mr O’Donohue say that two weeks
is not enough time. These documents are in fact five
and a half months overdue already, because it was the
coalition government’s promise to release them. We
then heard from Mr O’Donohue that we can all relax
because a discussion paper is out. We are supposed to
read the discussion paper and from that, using the
information the government thinks we need to have,
make our own decision. I am sorry, but the government
is not going to get off that easy; we are going back to
the original documents. It was Mr O’Brien in his press
release who committed to releasing exactly these
documents. We are going back; it will be like it is on
Air Crash Investigation.
Ms Pulford interjected.
Mr BARBER — It was the government’s election
promise to release not just documents about smart
meters but the documents that had been refused by the
then government in the Legislative Council. The
definition of the minister’s policy is the definition of
this motion. If we are going to go back, we are not
going to do a few little submissions on the discussion
paper. We are going to go back as they do on Air Crash
Investigation. Does the member know that show? It is
on late at night. It is a bit dodgy, but I really like it. On
that program they go all the way back and discover
exactly why it was that a plane fell out of the sky, and
until they get to the proximal clause, if you like, of the
bad decision, they do not rest — and neither will I. I
look forward to whatever it is that Mr O’Brien comes
up with next.
Motion agreed to.