EUAA Submission: Network Infrastructure Projects (NSW Roadmap) – Policy Paper 5
Emily Wood | November 12, 2021
‘We have been involved in all Roadmap consultation process through our membership of the NSW Consumer Reference Group and we appreciate the Department establishing this Group to assist their engagement.
Overall we have found the Roadmap engagement process frustrating and far from the best practice approach that we regularly experience in our engagement with electricity and gas networks. We acknowledge that the Government has passed legislation and is very keen that matters proceed very quickly for it to achieve the legislation’s objectives. This means engagement will be truncated which reduces our level of confidence that the final outcome will be in the long-term interests of consumers.
We keep being told that the Department welcomes our feedback but find it difficult to see how that feedback is reflected in the Department’s approach. The sequencing of engagement has been particularly frustrating as we are asked to comment on Policy papers issued in a sequence that does not provide the whole view of the governance framework but expects feedback on details that require an understanding of the governance framework.
We have constantly found it very difficult to respond to questions in all of the Papers because of the lack of both detail provided and context of where it fits into the overall framework. This Paper is no different to past papers – a lot of general statements, but is short on detail. For example, to provide the level of feedback the Department is requesting requires a lot more detail than that provided in Figure 4 for the authorisation process. For example, the Minister will have considerable directions powers but we are yet to see the details.
It was no surprise to us when we saw the results of the menti.com survey in the 4th November webinar on this Paper to the question “What are your first impressions of the funding/cost recovery pathways in terms of transparency and certainty for timeline delivery” – showed ‘supportive’ (3), ‘unsupportive’ (1), not sure/need more information’ (25).
We found ourselves talking with other stakeholders to see if they were able to explain the missing parts to us. We found they had the same confusion as us and the same questions as us. Unlike some previous Policy papers, the Consumer Reference Group was not provided with a briefing prior to the deadline for submissions….’
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