Australia

Documents

A new regulatory framework for the Victorian water industry

The Australian state of Victoria will be implementing a new water pricing framework for the
next regulatory price review in 2018. The framework will apply to 16 of the State’s urban
water businesses and Southern Rural Water.
In May 2016, the Essential Services Commission (ESC), Victoria’s economic regulator,
released a position paper setting out a proposed, new pricing approach and invited
submissions on its proposal.3 Based on feedback received through this consultation process,
the ESC released a final report in October 2016 that sets out the water pricing framework and
approach that is to be implemented from 2018.4

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Documents

Energy and environmental policy: the GB experience A Report for the Australian Energy Market Commission

This Report provides an account of the development of GB energy and environmental policies over recent decades, with a focus on the extent to which they have worked together to bring about best-feasible trade-offs between major policy objectives such as reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and promotion of the long-term interests of energy consumers

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Documents

STREAMLINING REGULATORY AND COMPETITION APPEALS

In 2012, supported by a secretariat at the Commonwealth Department of Resources, Energy and
Tourism and by Dr Chris Decker, then of the Regulatory Policy Institute, Oxford, we conducted a
review for the Australian federal and state governments of the Limited Merits Review regime (the
“LMR”) in Australia for appeals of energy network decisions made by the relevant regulator. The
LMR regime had been introduced in 2008 with an intention to streamline appeals procedures. Our
Review extended over a six month period and was based upon: written submissions, mostly in
response to two ‘Issues Papers’ (consultation documents) that we published; an extensive series of
meetings we held with interested parties, including consumer representative bodies, companies,
regulators and government departments; detailed analysis of the substance of the individual cases
that had passed through the new system; a study of appeals systems in overseas jurisdictions; and a
study of the role and scope of Australian administrative tribunals in reviewing other types of
administrative decisions ‘on the merits’ . In consequence, we collected a considerable body of
evidence.

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