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23 Aug 2005 Queensland Competition Authority Amendment Bill 2595 and we should shut off trade. Our economy would stop, but where it would first impact—where it would hit absolutely hardest—would be in the bush. If these people who vote for the member for Tablelands could not export their produce, we would not be selling things anymore. Some 85 per cent of our sugar crop, for instance, is exported. Imagine the impact of shutting down agricultural exports. The member for Tablelands, in seeking to represent her constituents, has to understand that her constituents only make a living because Australia is part of an open world economy. That is not rocket science; it is just dead basic economics. There are three basic aspects of this bill. The first is that it makes QCA determinations applicable to the lessees of assets even when they are not the owner. That is the case with the much talked about Dalrymple Bay where the state owns the assets, but it is leased to Prime Infrastructure which, in turn, is owned by Babcock and Brown. Secondly, the bill increases the QCA’s role in arbitration and dispute resolution. That is, it can get the parties talking. Thirdly, it allows the QCA to share information with relevant Queensland government departments that are coregulators. I want to again touch very briefly on some of the debate that has gone around matters to do with the QCA in recent times. In particular, I want to touch on the abject hypocrisy of the federal government on these matters. In May the now former Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, described the bottleneck of coal exports at Dalrymple Bay as a national disgrace. He was particularly hard on the Queensland government for having allowed this to happen. The hypocrisy of this situation is surreal. We have the members of the Liberal Party, who are great advocates of privatisation, now trying to open up the market in industrial relations. They are the free market gurus who want to bash up the state for leasing an asset to a private provider. Members have to ask: in this debate, which side are they on? Do the members of the Liberal Party think that the state should own and operate all of our infrastructure, which is what they were suggesting, or do they think that it should be privatised and leased to the private sector? In this debate we can have it only one way or the other. The federal government, in fact, supported very much what we had done in leasing Dalrymple Bay to Prime Infrastructure. But it saw the opportunity to take a kick at us when there were problems. That is just rank hypocrisy. It is the most short-term political opportunism. I really think that a government that completely lacks an abiding philosophical base on economic issues can never be trusted. But I guess we already know that about John Howard and the federal government. Of course, the real problem was not the bottleneck at Dalrymple Bay. The real problem was that Australia’s current account deficit had reached seven per cent—an absolutely shocking level—and the federal government was casting around looking for someone to blame. It decided that the fact that we could not dig up our coal and ship it offshore at a rapid rate was as good a point to start as any. Members then have to ask: why is Australia’s current account deficit so high? That is a really serious economic question. The reason Australia’s current account deficit is so high is not that we cannot dig up our coal and ship it out fast enough; the reason we have this serious structural flaw in our economy is that the federal government does not have a particular economic strategy for where we are going in the future. In the debate on the industrial relations legislation a week ago I talked about the fact that we do not have a strategy on integrating the environment with our economic policy. We do not have a strategy for genuinely creating a knowledge nation. At a national level we do not have any strategy except to open up our economy more and more and more. That is not good enough. While that is our only strategy, we will deregulate, we will lower our wage costs and we will need to dig up our dirt and our rocks and our coal and ship them out as fast as we can because we do not have any kind of higherorder aim. That is the major failing of the Howard government. That is why it has been casting around looking for excuses over things such as Dalrymple Bay. That is where the federal government needs to do better. That is where we contrast with the federal government so greatly. We have a Smart State agenda. That is where we show them the way. That is where we continue to lead them on economic policy. Today, this debate touches on those issues because the federal government bought into it over Dalrymple Bay. I very much support the bill. Mrs LIZ CUNNINGHAM (Gladstone—Ind) (3.13 pm): In rising to speak to the Queensland Competition Authority Amendment Bill, I wish to raise several matters and to seek clarification on a couple of matters. The QCA was established to allow competition to be examined within the Queensland context. At the time the enacting legislation was to be presented to this parliament I can remember expressing some concerns in a briefing on it. I was told that without the QCA legislation the competition matters would be assessed, considered and decided by the national competition authority, which would take an Australia-wide view, if you like, and would not know some of the detail and the information that related specifically to Queensland. On that basis, it was possible for Queenslanders to be significantly disadvantaged. So the idea of the QCA was to establish a competition authority that would look after the best interests of Queenslanders and ensure that monopoly entities, in their decision making, would make decisions that were favourable in terms of service provision to our communities. I have to say that, although I do not have a lot to do with many of the decisions of the QCA, one or two of them have generated a deep concern within my electorate. It is on that basis that I have some
2596 Queensland Competition Authority Amendment Bill 23 Aug 2005 misgivings when the QCA is given more power and more authority. A little township called Mount Larcom in my electorate had a water pricing issue. The QCA reviewed the Gladstone Area Water Board for the second time in two years, although those reviews were supposed to be undertaken only on a five-yearly cycle. In that review the QCA recommended that Mount Larcom consumers pay something like $8 a kilolitre for water. That was an increase of over 1,000 per cent per kilolitre of water that was currently supplied. There appeared to be no public benefit test applied and the decision was made purely on an economic basis, that is, the cost of the line and the rate of return that was appropriate, according to the QCA, for the Gladstone Area Water Board. At the time the Calliope council raised a concern about the way in which the QCA reached its conclusions and asked for clarification of the basis on which its decision was made. To my knowledge that information still has not been forthcoming from the QCA. The QCA appeared not to have taken into account an historical agreement with Cement Australia about the company carrying the operation and maintenance costs of the line where water is taken off for Mount Larcom. Certainly, there was no consideration given of the ability of that community to pay the exorbitant price that was to be the ceiling. I also found the QCA unaccountable in that process. It put forward this recommendation of a ceiling price. The Mount Larcom community was devastated. Most people said, ‘We won’t be able to afford to pay for water. We’ll have to go off line. We won’t be able to sell our properties because no-one else will buy them because the cost of water is so high. The QCA has effectively left us with nowhere to go.’ The QCA then reviewed its figures and the increase was something like the increases in the CPI plus the current costs. But in the interim, there had been months of concern and heightened distress by residents who lived there, a public meeting and a great deal of publicity. The QCA refused to send a representative to the public meeting to explain its process. The QCA sent a letter which effectively blamed everyone else but the QCA. So I express concern when the QCA is given additional power, as this legislation proposes. As the member for Ipswich said, there are three elements to this legislation to ensure that the legislative provisions in the Queensland Competition Authority Act are workable and enforceable against access providers where those access providers are not the owners of the declared facility. The example that has been used is Dalrymple Bay. Certainly, if a private entity has leasehold power over a strategic piece of infrastructure such as a port, it should be subjected to the same rules, requirements, obligations and constraints that a government entity would have to work through and work with. The second element allows the Queensland Competition Authority to undertake an additional monitoring and/or dispute resolution role for government business voluntary codes of conduct. Although that will apply to some of the major infrastructure for government business—and I looked at local government infrastructure to see where it might apply—it may apply to regional landfills and the like where the QCA will have some powers. It is the third element that I would seek the Premier’s advice on: to allow the QCA to share relevant confidential information with the state departmental coregulators for electricity, rail and water without the regulated entities’ consent. My concern is that it could establish a situation where openhanded communication could be put at risk. The explanatory notes state— The Act does not allow the QCA to disclose commercially-confidential information to another person without the provider’s consent, except in those circumstances where the recipient of this information is a Minister, a QCA member or an entity that performs similar functions to the QCA ‘under a law of the Commonwealth, another State or a foreign country.’ They go on to state— The amendments will allow the QCA to share confidential information, relating to the State’s regulated rail, energy and water entities, with the relevant departmental co-regulator (namely, the Directors-General of Transport, Energy and Natural Resources and Mines, respectively) without the need for first obtaining the relevant regulated entity’s consent. Is that the extent of the power, that it allows for confidential information sharing between QCA, the shareholding minister and the departmental directors-general? How far through that organisation will it allow confidential information to be transported? I ask this because confidential information could include the price, the terms of a contract, whether the contract has been subject to a dispute, the nature of the dispute and information in relation to the dispute resolution or lack of resolution. I would be interested to know how that information will be contained within the departments, whether those same confidentiality obligations will apply to the directors-general and, if the Premier says later that it will be extended to other office holders, whether confidentiality will apply to them. I would also be interested to know whether the Premier sees this as undermining the open communication that, I believe, currently exists between most entities and their shareholding departments. It is my understanding that there is a free flow of information between, for example, QR and the transport department and area water boards and the Department of Natural Resources and Mines. I expect that there would be a free flow of information. If there have been problems, I would be interested to know the types of problems that have been encountered. But, in particular, I would like to know the breadth of that information—how far through the departments the information will go. Will it just go to the minister and the director-general or will it go to other office holders within those respective shareholding portfolios? I look forward to the Premier’s response.
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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
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2538 Ministerial Statement 23 Aug 2
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Page 13 and 14: 2544 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 and 58: 2588 Succession Amendment Bill 23 A
Page 59 and 60: 2590 Queensland Competition Authori
Page 63: 2594 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
Page 111 and 112: 2642 Adjournment 23 Aug 2005 One pa
Page 113 and 114: 2644 Adjournment 23 Aug 2005 years.
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2646 Adjournment 23 Aug 2005 Finall
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