In September 2014 the federal government issued its report on the above review. The report made 52 recommendations across the full range of competition policy, laws and regulation. It recommended that the principles underpinning competition policy be revised and updated.
The first recommendation was to do with competition principles and can be found at https://www.treasury.qld.gov.au/pub...fs/competition-policy-review-final-report.pdf
An extract, including the Qld Governments response reads :
"The Australian Government, state and territory, and local governments should commit to the following principles:
Competition policies, laws and institutions should promote the longterm interests of consumers.
Legislative frameworks and government policies and regulations binding the public or private sectors should not restrict competition.
Governments should promote consumer choice when funding, procuring or providing goods and services and enable informed choices by consumers.
The model for government provision or procurement
of goods and services should separate the interests
of policy (including funding), regulation and service provision, and should encourage a diversity of providers.
Governments should separate remaining public monopolies from competitive service elements, and also separate contestable elements into smaller independent business activities.
Government business activities that compete with private provision, whether forprofit or notforprofit, should comply with competitive neutrality principles to ensure they do not enjoy a net competitive advantage simply as a result of government ownership.
A right to thirdparty access to significant bottleneck infrastructure should be granted where it would promote a material increase in competition in dependent markets and would promote the public interest.
Independent authorities should set, administer or oversee prices for natural monopoly infrastructure providers.
Applying these principles should be subject to a public interest test, such that legislation or government policy should not restrict competition unless:
the benefits of the restriction to the community as a whole outweigh the costs; and
the objectives of the legislation or government policy can only be achieved by restricting competition.
The Queensland Government supports in-principle a new set of competition principles as the current principles are overly long and dated.
The proposed principles are generally suitable, provided they are set in context by a preamble which underlines that the purpose of competition policy is not competition for its own sake but public benefit, and recognises the continued case for some public interest exceptions. These exceptions need rigorous justification.
The implementation of the principles needs to recognise that States and Territories are responsible for implementation in their areas of responsibility.
If, and I say if, the cost of coal produced by Moreton is cheaper than the current and future cost of coal produced from Meandu, then the change to Moreton supplied coal is well supported by the purpose of the competition policy, in that the competition Moreton offers is NOT competition for its own sake, but does offer REAL PUBLIC BENEFIT through not only the potential to reduce the cost of electricity generation but also, as outlined in MRV's PFS, a number of other social and environmental benefits.
The Qld Govt's response (bolded above) indicates that "states and territories are responsible for implementation (of competition principles) in their areas of responsibility"
Does this mean it is encumbent upon the Qld Government and Stanwell's shareholding minister / Qld Treasury to make an open and transparent evaluation of these two options to ensure the competition principles are followed for the ratepayers and electricity consumers of Queensland ???
Cheers
Z
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