1. the Act itself applies the Gas Pipelines Access Law (comprising the two schedules described in (b) and (c) below) as a law in South Australia. The Act also deals with certain South Australian specific matters such as local Code bodies and transitional arrangements;
2. Schedule 1, which provides the legal framework for the operation of the Access Regime;
3. Schedule 2, which contains the National Third Party Access Code for Natural Gas Pipeline Systems (the Code). The Code contains the detailed access principles that are to apply under the Access Regime.

Each other State and Territory (except Western Australia) has enacted legislation also applying the Gas Pipelines Access Law (that is Schedules 1 and 2 to the South Australian Act) as a law in its State or Territory. Western Australia has enacted complementary legislation. The other States and Territories “application legislation” also deals with certain other matters specific to that State or Territory such as local Code bodies and transitional arrangements.

The Gas Pipelines Access (Commonwealth) Act 1998 facilitates the national coverage of the Access Regime by ensuring it will apply to offshore waters, the relevant external territories and adjacent areas, the Jervis Bay territory and to the Moomba to Sydney pipeline. In addition, the Commonwealth legislation contains provisions which facilitates the use of Commonwealth bodies in the national scheme.

The Code (Schedule 2 to the Gas Pipelines Access (South Australia) Act 1997, was amended by 

1. The First Amending Agreement which came into operation on 23 December 1999;
2. The Second Amending Agreement which came into operation on 9 November 2000;
3. The Third Amending Agreement which came into operation on 22 November 2001.
4. The Fifth Amending Agreement which came into operation on 27 June 2002.
5. The Fourth Amending Agreement which came into operation on 6 February 2003
6. The Seventh Amending Agreement which came into operation on 17 April 2003.
7. The Sixth Amending Agreement which came into operation on 24 April 2003.

The latest version of the Code includes these amendments.

Many sections of the Code can be changed by agreement of the Relevant Ministers. The latest Code is available elsewhere on this site.

The Regulations under Part 3 of the Gas Pipelines Access (South Australia) Act 1997 were published in the South Australian Government Gazette on 16 December 1999 (pages 3463-3472) and came into operation on that date. Amendments came into operation on 6 February 2003. These regulations are available in Word document* (0.1 Mb), RTF (0.3 Mb) and PDF (0.1 Mb) formats.

The lead legislation approach contains a number of political checks and balances. These are contained in the CoAG Natural Gas Pipelines Access Agreement, (available as PDF 0.1 Mb, Word document* 0.1 Mb and RTF 0.2 Mb) signed on 7 November 1997. This Agreement provides the “political cement” to bind the jurisdictions together, so that any changes to the legislation are agreed by all parties prior to being placed before the South Australian Parliament.

While a jurisdiction remains a party to this Agreement, its right to legislate unilaterally regarding access to gas pipelines is placed in abeyance.