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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
2590 Queensland Competition Authority Amendment Bill 23 Aug 2005 him or his government. Secondly, having established in his own mind that he is not responsible, the Premier then apologises and announces that he is going to fix it. He has pulled this stunt so many times that the members opposite do not recognise it anymore, but I will give them a reminder. Do the members opposite remember the electricity crisis? No-one knew there was a crisis—not Paul Lucas, the minister responsible for energy, and not Pete—no-one! But when the network’s failure became apparent to all and sundry in the summer of 2004, all of a sudden Pete came to the rescue of Queenslanders; he saved them from themselves! As it turned out, according to the Premier, it was not the government’s fault for not ensuring its government owned corporations were investing enough in the network, and it was definitely not the fault of the government for stripping out billions of dollars in dividends. This legislation allows the Queensland Competition Authority to share information with the regulated entity, but it should not be forgotten that the GOCs that run the electricity industry in this state already had that authority to communicate. We have a situation where the government is playing catchup with this legislation. However, let us hope that in the future some sort of a signal comes from somewhere that allows the government to get in early rather than wait for a crisis. As it turned out, according to the Premier, the crisis in the electricity industry was the fault of everyday Queenslanders who were encouraged to buy airconditioners. We had a situation in north Queensland, particularly at Dalrymple Bay, where there was an enormous cost in terms of demurrage because of the number of ships that were waiting. Believe it or not, demurrage was costing in the vicinity of $876 million a year. If members wanted to work it out, for instance, it is $60,000 per ship per day by 40 ships—which there were—by 365 days, which makes it $876 million a year that was actually wasted because we could not load those ships. That backlog has been reduced. Prime has been able to get on with the job now and has put some infrastructure in place. That has increased the capacity of the port, so we have seen an improvement. I flew over there a few months ago. I think even at that stage there were still 22 ships sitting around waiting. The interesting thing was that some of them were situated out almost beyond the horizon. It is still a problem and it needs to be addressed. At the time we were told that there was a holdup with the Queensland Competition Authority. I could not get my head around that. How could that hold up loading? Obviously the situation occurred because Prime was only leasing the port and did not actually own it. That is how we ended up in that situation. At that stage the number of ships waiting to be loaded was increasing and the demand for coal was increasing. The mines knew that the demand was there. It is quite extraordinary that it went on for so long. Something should have been done sooner. However, this legislation may help to alleviate that situation. We have seen the same type of crisis management style being adopted recently in relation to the health system. According to the Premier, it is not his fault. According to the Premier and his expert panel of spin doctors, it is the fault of everyday Queenslanders who are rather inconveniently getting sick—the taxpayers—that our health system is so bad. We have to make sure that we do not need to find excuses in the future. We have to make sure that this legislation is workable—and we have to make it work—because our future is at stake. If members recall, the federal Treasurer said at the time—and it was quite a talking point around the whole nation—that Queensland was holding up the nation’s economy, and it really was. Those ships were out there waiting to get loaded. That was not the only place where there were delays, but that was the worst example. That was why attention was focused on Queensland. With those comments, we support the legislation. Mr QUINN (Robina—Lib) (2.39 pm): The Liberal Party will be supporting the legislation principally because we do not want to see a repeat of the experience where over 40 ships were anchored off Dalrymple Bay trying to load coal and unable to do so in a timely manner. That image flashed around the world to our coal importing nations, our customers, would have been vastly negative and would not have shown this state in a good light for the future. Much has been said in the past about how this impasse arose in terms of the Dalrymple Bay facility, one of the largest coal exporting facilities in the world. Suffice it to say, it should not have got to the stage where we had that backlog of ships waiting over the horizon to start with. The government should have been more proactive in trying to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. It certainly, as I said, sent a negative message around the world. We will support the legislation because we do not want to see that happen again. There is no doubt in my mind that we need to make sure that the QCA legislation is up to speed in terms of its impact upon privately leased pieces of state government owned infrastructure and make sure that that does not happen again. As I said, we will be supporting the legislation. Mr SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Mount Coot-tha, I recognise and welcome in the gallery the teachers and students from St Patrick’s primary school at Bundaberg in the electorate of Nita Cunningham. Welcome to Parliament House. Mr FRASER (Mount Coot-tha—ALP) (2.41 pm): I rise to support the Queensland Competition Authority Amendment Bill 2005, which provides for three important reforms to the competition legislation that we have in this state. All three of these reforms will enhance the record of micro-economic reform
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PROOF ISSN 1322-0330 WEEKLY HANSARD
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Table of Contents — Tuesday, 23 A
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2536 Papers 23 Aug 2005 PAPERS PAPE
Page 7 and 8: 2538 Ministerial Statement 23 Aug 2
Page 19 and 20: 2550 Scrutiny of Legislation Commit
Page 21 and 22: 2552 Private Members’ Statements
Page 23 and 24: 2554 Questions Without Notice 23 Au
Page 33 and 34: 2564 Members’ Ethics and Parliame
Page 35 and 36: 2566 Matters of Public Interest 23
Page 45 and 46: 2576 Constitutional and Other Legis
Page 47 and 48: 2578 Transport Legislation Amendmen
Page 49 and 50: 2580 Transport Legislation Amendmen
Page 51 and 52: 2582 Housing Legislation Amendment
Page 53 and 54: 2584 Education (Queensland College
Page 55 and 56: 2586 Succession Amendment Bill 23 A
Page 57: 2588 Succession Amendment Bill 23 A
Page 61 and 62: 2592 Queensland Competition Authori
Page 69 and 70: 2600 Racing Venues Development Amen
Page 81 and 82: 2612 Plumbing and Drainage and Othe
Page 99 and 100: 2630 Child Safety Legislation Amend
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2640 Child Safety Legislation Amend
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2642 Adjournment 23 Aug 2005 One pa
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2644 Adjournment 23 Aug 2005 years.
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2646 Adjournment 23 Aug 2005 Finall
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weekly hansard - Queensland Parliament - Queensland Government

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