Territory Stories

Ministerial Statement Reform of the Power and Water Authority Six months on

Details:

Title

Ministerial Statement Reform of the Power and Water Authority Six months on

Other title

Tabled paper 1301

Collection

Tabled Papers for 8th Assembly 1997 - 2001; Tabled Papers; ParliamentNT

Date

1999-06-03

Description

Tabled by Barry Coulter

Notes

Made available by the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory under Standing Order 240. Where copyright subsists with a third party it remains with the original owner and permission may be required to reuse the material.

Language

English

Subject

Tabled papers

File type

application/pdf

Use

Copyright

Copyright owner

See publication

License

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C1968A00063

Parent handle

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/296056

Citation address

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/394163

Page content

10 Accordingly, PAWA is working with the Department of the Chief Minister and Treasury to identify these responsibilities and their future place in a competitive market structure. Electrical inspection services are to be transferred to the Department of Industry and Business. This arrangement will result in the transfer of up to 12 staff from the Authority to DIB, further reducing PAWAs establishment. Legislation needs to be amended to support this transfer and this will be introduced in these sittings. To ensure an efficient competitive market, an access regime is required to regulate the participants in the market and to ensure that monopoly assets such as the distribution network and transmission lines are fairly priced. Treasury is developing such a draft access regime and it is expected that, following Cabinet consideration, the draft access code will be released for public comment and finalised in light of any comments received. The draft code envisages that PAWA could submit its proposed schedule of access charges for its power network to the proposed NT regulator for approval in September. Publication of the final approved access charges could then occur before the end of October, assuming there are no impediments raised during current legal proceedings. In order to develop access prices, revaluation of PAWA assets was required. This has ju st been completed. A separate exercise is now required to determine the asset optimised replacement values and economic values so that access charges can be set. It is important that the introduction of competition be an orderly process to prevent the long-term investments of the NT community being devalued without a commensurate gain to customers. 10