Because of the committee’s workload and the immediacy of the many submission responses to government policy, most of the discussion is undertaken via teleconference. The group had a full agenda for the Melbourne meeting, and took the opportunity to look to its future
program.
The group expects that regulatory matters will continue to be important for APIA, even though most of the work on the new National Gas Law has been completed. There will be submissions covering the Weighted Average Cost of Capital, some follow-up work on the new law and rules, and continuing negotiations on the establishment of the Gas Market Bulletin Board and a possible Short Term Trading Market. Nevertheless, there is increasing activity in government bodies on economic issues, including climate change policies, which will have real commercial and technical impact on APIA members.
With these new commercial challenges, the Government and Regulatory Affairs Committee’s role will expand to cover all government policy areas that are commercially critical – hence the committee’s new name: the Regulatory and Economic Policy Committee. Obviously, APIA’s many very capable committees will continue to manage the important issues affecting the industry, but they will be able to share the burden of assessing the economic impact of these policies and developing APIA policy responses, with the Regulatory and Economic Policy Committee members.