weekly hansard - Queensland Parliament - Queensland Government

23 Aug 2005 Queensland Competition Authority Amendment Bill 2589
The provision is intended to ensure that persons with a proper interest can see the contents of a will prior to the will’s admission to
probate (upon which, it becomes a public document) or in the event that probate is not sought and the estate is administered
informally. Providing individuals with a right to see the will may assist those who wish to make a claim against the estate, eg.
dependants of the deceased person who wish to make a family provision application.
The categories of persons eligible to access a will represent persons considered to have a proper interest in the will eg possible
beneficiaries or other claimants against the deceased’s estate (such as a person entitled to make a family provision application).
The provision will apply to all wills, regardless of when they were made.
Conclusion
Mr Speaker, this Bill reforms and modernises the law of wills in Queensland. It also represents a step closer to achieving
consistency of succession law across Australia. It is my hope that more Queenslanders will be encouraged to make wills which, as
a consequence of these reforms, are more likely to give effect to their actual intentions.
Acknowledgements
This Bill is the product of a lot of consultation and detailed examination over a long time. I would like to acknowledge the
considerable work of the Queensland Law Reform Commission (particularly the commission’s Director, Claire Riethmuller), in
coordinating the uniform succession laws project.
I commend this Bill to the house.
Debate, on motion of Mr Hobbs, adjourned.
Sitting suspended from 1.02 pm to 2.30 pm.
QUEENSLAND COMPETITION AUTHORITY AMENDMENT BILL
Second Reading
Resumed from 9 August (see p. 2214).
Mr HOBBS (Warrego—NPA) (2.30 pm): I am pleased to talk to the Queensland Competition
Authority Amendment Bill 2005. This is an important bill that we will be supporting. The Queensland
Competition Authority Amendment Bill is primarily designed to address the situation we witnessed
recently at Dalrymple Bay. Essentially, because the company concerned was leasing the facility and
was not the actual owner of the facility, the existing competition authority act did not give the
Queensland Competition Authority the power to enforce agreements about the upgrade of the site.
Rather, the law as it stood meant that the QCA had to rely solely on contractual provisions that had been
entered into with the company to enforce contractual arrangements. It is for that reason alone that the
opposition will be supporting this bill.
The bill also addresses two other areas that I think should be touched on briefly, those being
information sharing and compliance monitoring. The bill proposes giving the QCA the additional role of
compliance monitor and dispute resolution arbiter. The existing legislation currently precludes the QCA
from undertaking such a role. In particular, I believe it is important that the QCA be tasked with the job of
monitoring the compliance of parties to the voluntary codes of conduct that are in place. In the
explanatory notes it states—
The proposed amendments provide the QCA with the capacity to perform this role, if required by Ministers.
That is interesting in that no longer can ministers of this government say they did not know; it is
their job to know. That is what they are there for, and it is their job to make sure that the Queensland
Competition Authority is doing its job. I will come back to that point a little later.
The other major change relates to information sharing. Changes to the existing act will allow the
Queensland Competition Authority to share commercially confidential information with the relevant
departmental coregulator without having to first obtain the consent of the relevant regulated entity. The
opposition hopes that this amendment, in reality, will result in better coordination between all levels of
government so that we do not find ourselves in a situation in the future where another crisis emerges in
our state and it turns out that it was the result of one arm of government not talking to another arm of
government. This is a situation that often develops. We want to make sure that this does not occur.
Hopefully this legislation may resolve that.
However, it is interesting to note what actually transpired here. The reality is that the Beattie
government was once again caught out on its ability to ensure that the state’s infrastructure is up to
scratch and to plan for the future of our state. We faced a massive bottleneck blocking our ability to
export the state’s coal at a time when international markets were screaming out for our product. Given
that Labor has governed Queensland for all but two of the last 15 years, one would think that they would
have done something to ensure that we actually had the capacity to sell our products to the world but,
typically, it took a crisis to bring about any action. There are other issues such as a lack of water to
supply the coalmines in that region. We are going to find ourselves in a crisis situation. In due course we
are not going to be able to provide the product to meet contracts that those mines have already entered
into because there has not been enough long-term planning.
In the best tradition of Beattie Esq. politics, the Premier woke up one morning to find that there
was a crisis with a queue of ships lined up at Dalrymple Bay waiting and waiting to get access to our
coal. What did Premier Pete do? The first thing the Premier always does is find a culprit, and it is never