Legislative Council Wednesday 27 September 2017

 Ms  FORREST question  to ACTING LEADER of the GOVERNMENT in the LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

Thank you, Madam Acting President.  That did not entirely answer the question, but I might just rephrase it and put it again in terms of where we are at with pain specialists on the north-west.

My further question to the Acting Leader:  I refer to Hydro Tasmania and the Basslink Services Agreement.  Basslink Pty Ltd's parent, the Keppel Infrastructure Trust, told the Singapore Stock Exchange on 14 August 2017 that -

Hydro Tasmania has notified BPL of their intent to resume the usual contractual payment of the full facility fees (and accordingly discontinue the good faith payments) to BPL from September 2017, as the amount which Hydro Tasmania has purported to claim from BPL has been fully recovered by Hydro Tasmania in August 2017.

While BPL disagrees with Hydro Tasmania's set-off of its alleged claims arising from the Outage against the facility fees due to BPL, the resumption of payment of the facility fees is a constructive development towards the resolution of the outstanding matters.

Has this occurred?  If not, when is it likely to occur? What is the amount Hydro Tasmania claims was owed by Basslink Pty Ltd?

ANSWER

Madam Acting President, I thank the member for Murchison for her questions.

Hydro Tasmania resumed payment of the full facility fee in September 2017.  Commercial discussions with Basslink Pty Ltd relating to matters associated with the 2015-16 extended Basslink outage are ongoing.  The amounts outstanding and matters related to payments are confidential.