Power And Water Corporation: Providing Electricity, Water, Sewerage Services In NT. Essay.

History of Power and Water Corporation

Under the Corporations Act, in Australia the Power and Water Company had become the first Government owned corporation on 1^st of July 2002. Power and Water (McLean, 2017), is a power plant. It deals with the retail as well as the generation of electricity; it also was responsible for providing water and sewerage services in the Northern Territory. Power and Water has been the first Government owned Corporation in the Northern Territory. Later in July,2014 the two parts concerning the generation of electricity and the retail of electricity were separated and it formed two new government owned corporations named, Territory Generation and Jacana Energy, respectively.

Power and Water Corporation mainly focused on:

• The electricity networks which were controlled and maintained by the Utilities Commission
• One of the licensed provider looked after the water and sewerage part
• Indigenous Essential Services Pvt. Ltd. provided water, electricity and sewerage solutions to the remote areas.

Power and Water Corporation would supply electricity to Jacana Energy and few other retailers that would demand electricity in the market of Northern Territory. The main objective of Power and Water, being a government owned industry it had to function efficiently and also had to wisely aim at sustainable (Williams et al., 2014)  returns, so that the people now and the future can make use of the power plant with exhausting it.  Power and Water Corporation follows the government public policy for dealing with matters like management and employment. All this would be applicable under the “Public Sector Employment and Management Act.”  Power and Water Corporation have a very important role to play in the Northern Territory’s hazard management and disaster arrangement affairs. The main aim of the industry is to supply electricity, water, and sewerage in the remote areas.  The Power and Water operates the power plants, wells and reservoirs that supply water, stream and electricity, in the Northern Territory.

Power and Water Corporation expands over an area of 1.3 million square kilometres, supplying electricity, water and sewerage. It extends its retail services to about 72 remote areas. They have about 940 staff that are living as well as working in the Northern territory. These employed staff work on various fields as electricians, accountants (Silva et al., 2015) and as engineers. The employment level starts from the position of an apprentice and goes up till the senior management; also the industry offers fulltime as well as part time job to its employees depending on the role of field or office work. The Power and Work Corporation also keeps in mind the safety measures it needs to take to protects its employees, they have to be transparent and accountable for their deeds and most importantly, give respect to all the employees and treat them with courtesy and always encourage them to achieve their goals.

Focus of Power and Water Corporation

The Power and Water is a government owned corporation which has a “Share holding Minister” and a “Portfolio Minister”.  There is a “Statement of Corporate Intent” which every year brings out the relation between the government and the corporation and other details have to be laid down in the Annual Report. There has been a tremendous (Van et al., 2016)  growth in this industry, and the power plant has lived up to the expectations of the growing populations in the residential sector and the business sector by supplying them with water, electricity, sewerage and gas. The environment we live in has extreme climate changes, the challenges have to be met and they have to meet the demand of the current as well as future generations.

Thus, we can say that the Power and Water Corporation supplies electricity all over the Northern Territory to approximately 2,43,700 people who are scattered over an area of 1.3 million square kilometre. In order to maintain this the industry has more than 5,600 kilometre of overhead lines, 1690 kilometres of underground cable and about 37,500 towers and poles. The corporation faces many challenges like the environmental issues like storms, cyclones and few more which cause hindrance. But none the less the power plant as whole deals with all the issues and only work to supply water, electricity and sewerage to the areas they have to.

Regulatory framework is usually, the tax information, and other regulations as well as information are which involve relevant rules, laws and certain regulatory bodies. These regulating bodies have a crucial role to play for the industry because they lay down the principles that have to be followed by the industry. Industries need to have a regulatory framework for better functioning and understanding of the companies’ process and capital structure and a proposal that have to be followed.

 Power and Water Corporation is one of the major supplies of electricity, this industry is a government owned industry. It distributes electricity, water and sewerage to the remote areas of the Northern Territory. The Power and Water Corporation operates under the regulatory framework of the National Electricity Law, it slays down the elements and functions or the principles that it has to follow. The “National Energy Customer Framework” also lay out the details for the consumer protection and rules or laws that regulate the demand and supply of the ingredients of the power plant to its customers are emphasised in the “National Energy Retail Law and Rules”.  The “Australian Energy Regulator” assists and regulates the economic distributions and the supply of the services of the Power plant its emphasis on the amount that is need to be recovered by the Power and Water Corporation. Also the Power and Water Corporation has to submit a proposal to the “Australian Energy Regulator” once in five years, explaining the capital money that they will be proposing and their plan of operation and also the estimate amount that will be needed to fund these projects.

Role of Power and Water Corporation

There are various regulatory authorities that have a role to play, they are mentioned below:

• The Australian Energy Market Operator,  are responsible for maintaining the security and functions in relation to the wholesale of electricity and gas supply from the markets,
• There have been established a Council which involve the Federal and the State ministers that focus on the proposed ideas for the market reforms in Australia.
• The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal they are the regulators for network and techniques and safety in licensing

There is also the “Utilities Act 2000” , that focuses on the framework under which it regulates certain aspects of the utility service.  To be able to supply a particular service in a specific territory, the utility should have license under the Utilities Act or should be subject to exception. Utility services can be specified under the followings heads:

• The demand and supply of electricity
• The demand and supply of gas
• The demand and supply of water
• The transferring, collecting and treating sewage also its disposal

This Commission is responsible providing license. They analyse and monitor the industry according to their obligations before granting the license. The action to which the commission is legally bound for providing license arise from various context to the Utilities Act, its conditions, the codes made for the industries in Part 4 of the Utilities Act and lastly, the technical codes.

Another regulatory frame work is the Electricity Act 1994 and the Electricity Regulation 2006; they govern most of the electricity industries. They deal with the functioning and processing of the electricity that are used that include licensing of the industry and its employees as well as monitoring (Dijk et al., 2013) the license. Also one of its main roles are to approve and make codes for the industry for example, Electricity Industry Codes, that focus on the standard of demand and supply. To agree to the price of the electricity in relation to the customer. The commission also provides for the settlement of any dispute between the supplier and the client. The commission also has to take care of the rationing of electricity as well as the restrictions that have to be kept in mind.

Any form of agreement between a sovereign state and international organisation that come under the international law is called a treaty. Treaty has various other names such as international agreements, covenant, pact are few of them. The power and Water Corporation had entered into various agreements. In 2010 the Corporation entered into a 20 years old power purchase agreement with the Territory’s fist 1MW solar power station, to be built in the area of Alice Springs. The Alice Spring Water Reclamation Plant had received great honour of Environmental Engineering Excellence in 2010. The Northern territory electricity market on 1^st April 2010 was open to all its competitors. Green power was launched giving the customers opportunity to invest in the renewable energies. Some treaties that are widely know all around the world are Vienna Convention it caters to the Geneva Convention (Gostin & Sridhar, 2014) and the UN Charter.

Regulatory Framework of Power and Water Corporation

With growth and expansion of the power plant it made various impacts such as the Darwin River Dam had been raised by 1.3 metres. They also made decision to purchase two new Rolls Royce turbines for Channel Island Power Station, 2011. With entering into the power purchase agreement it increased the capacity of Darwin River Dam by 20 percent. The contract encouraged the construction of Manton Dam wall and new houses were installed at Myilly Point septic tanks was installed. Work was also started on a new project Owen Spring Power Station which spread around 25 km around the Alice Spring. There was more cost reflective and the Corporation led to financial stability in the Northern Territory’s Government in relation to increase in the tariffs. Power and Work also received its first gas in its power stations from Bonaparte Basin offshore and entered into a contract of 25 years to supply gas. Thus, it launched the Territory Green Power.

Power and Water Corporation also undertook a major water management survey called the Darwin Water Story. The treaties on the Australian Domestic laws have got a lot of attention and have made an impact on the domestic laws. In case there is absence of legislation (Schneider et al., 2014)  the treaties do not have any obligations in Australia. Section 61 of the Australian Constitution states that, the Executives have the unlimited power to enter into international treaties (Mueller et al., 2016 ). The central government is usually responsible for conducting the foreign affairs.

There are certain International tax agreements that are applicable for both the residents and the non-residents of Australia. For example, the Income Tax Treaty. Tax treaties are those agreements that have been agreed by two or more countries. Australia has tax treaties with more than 40 countries.  They are also known as “Tax Conventions” or “Double Tax Agreement”. Australia has made a number of agreements by regularly making payments which are made into funds by an employee for his future pension.  Every resident (Zahedi et al., 2013)  is affected by the tax treaty, depending upon the nature of income person is liable to pay tax.

  The federal states like Australia have bad record of ratifying such instruments. But the federal states which include the Central Government has more scope to implement treaties that need not be ratified.  There are certain grounds on the basis of which the central government has been criticized. The participation of the federal state in the International Labour Organisation has emphasised on various issues and decreases the number of ratifications of treaties by the federal states.  With the help of the International Labour Organisation, it decreased the obligations that were previously made. The Australian government was in the favour to let Australia enjoy its international personality due to its federal system. The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) demanded Australia to keep valid terms in their treaty with India in order to avoid any kind of failure that may arise due to keeping any such point in the treaty that may affect the pact between the two nations. Thus, it can be said that federalism (Davies et al., 2014) was responsible for the unneeded records that were being made. However, we can say that there are various Agreements and Conventions that have been made and have impacted the products and services that have been provided by the Multinational Companies in Australia.

Reference List

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Gostin, L. O., & Sridhar, D. (2014). Global health and the law. New England Journal of Medicine, 370(18), 1732-1740.

McLean, J. (2017). Water cultures as assemblages: Indigenous, neoliberal, colonial water cultures in northern Australia. Journal of Rural Studies.

Mueller, N., Lewis, A., Roberts, D., Ring, S., Melrose, R., Sixsmith, J., ... & Ip, A. (2016). Water observations from space: Mapping surface water from 25years of Landsat imagery across Australia. Remote Sensing of Environment, 174, 341-352.

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Silva Vieira, A., Stewart, R. A., & Beal, C. (2015). Air source heat pump water heaters in residential buildings in Australia: Identification of key performance parameters.

Van Vliet, M. T., Wiberg, D., Leduc, S., & Riahi, K. (2016). Power-generation system vulnerability and adaptation to changes in climate and water resources. Nature Climate Change.

Williams, A., White, N., Mushtaq, S., Cockfield, G., Power, B., & Kouadio, L. (2015). Quantifying the response of cotton production in eastern Australia to climate change. Climatic Change, 129(1-2), 183-196.

Zahedi, A., Phasey, J., Boland, T., & Ryan, U. (2016). First report of Cryptosporidium species in farmed and wild buffalo from the Northern Territory, Australia. Parasitology research, 115(3), 1349-1353.