Moomba-Sydney Pipeline System Sale Act 1994

States and Territories are prevented from charging stamp duty (a tax on property transfers) on any of the transactions involved in the sale — saving the deal from potentially significant tax costs.

What else did the law do?

• Abolished the Pipeline Authority — the government body that previously ran the pipeline. Its remaining assets and debts flowed back to the Commonwealth when it was wound up (no later than 31 December 1996).
• Rewrote the Pipeline Authority Act 1973 to reflect the Authority's scaled-back role as it wound down — changing references from "petroleum" to "gas" and restricting what the Authority could still do.
• Added a new mechanism (Part 8A) allowing the Commonwealth to later transfer its retained easements to other parties via a Government Gazette notice — a flexible tool for future pipeline deals.
• Capped Commonwealth payments to Newco at $6.5 million under the sale agreement.
• Made the law operate despite any other laws or contracts that might otherwise block the transfer — meaning third parties couldn't veto the sale by relying on existing contracts.
• Included a constitutional safety valve: if the law accidentally took someone's property without adequate compensation (which the Constitution forbids), the Commonwealth must pay fair compensation.

Why does this matter?

This is a classic 1990s privatisation law. It transferred a piece of national energy infrastructure from public to private hands, protected workers during the transition, and cleaned up the government's balance sheet by extinguishing debts and abolishing the regulatory body. The pipeline carried natural gas serving millions of Australians, so the ownership change had long-term implications for energy pricing and infrastructure management.