'Unique circumstances': Andrew Barr chasing gas bill relief and surplus CSIRO land at national cabinet

The federal, state and territory leaders are expected on Friday to sort out the finer details of a $3 billion national plan power relief package to cap coal and gas prices announced in December, before it is finalised by the nation's treasurers next week.

It is a 50-50 Commonwealth-state funded package, but Canberrans have been expecting to get smaller rebates than other Australians due to its electricity generation coming from 100 per cent renewable sources.

"The area that I'm more focused on is gas price increases," Chief Minister Andrew Barr told The Canberra Times.

"So I guess the point that we are further progressing with the Commonwealth is to what extent will the gas price cap ameliorate gas price increases in the territory."

Under the "targeted and temporary" plan, gas prices will be capped for one year at $12 a gigajoule, with gas retailers subject to a mandatory code of conduct.

Treasury modelling suggested the average Australian household will pay $230 less under the plan, but power bills are still expected to rise by 23 per cent this year.

"We just need to test the extent to which the level of increase in gas prices will impact on ACT residents more, for obvious reasons of our cold winter and, in fact, we use more gas," Mr Barr, who is also the ACT's treasurer, said.

"We would be hopeful that the ACT's unique circumstances with renewable electricity contracts providing that degree of protection, but being more exposed on gas prices will be taken into account in an energy bill relief package as opposed to an electricity bill relief package."

State and territory leaders are expected to lobby the Commonwealth to overhaul Medicare and increase funding for primary care and hospitals.

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Mr Barr said COVID emergency arrangements relating to hospital funding and activity must be continued, and longer term, the collapse of the primary health care system must be addressed.

"Because they can't get in to see a doctor, or their local GP or can't afford it, they are presenting emergency departments. For us, at the moment, we have a low rate of bulk billing. And that means that more patients are presenting to Emergency rather than being able to access health care through a GP," Mr Barr said.

"So that's adding to demand in our hospital EDs. That's the least efficient and most expensive way to provide health care."

The Chief Minister said the shift needs to be where the money goes as it would be "so much cheaper" for the Commonwealth and for taxpayers to be looking at the primary health care system.

"We'll be pursuing those matters, the Commonwealth has a series of election commitments, [like] the urgent care clinics," he said.

"How that, in the ACT context, how that model intersects with our nurse-led walking centres and some of the new innovative community based health care models that we're looking at as well is the bilateral discussion between the ACT and the Commonwealth."

Mr Barr will also be pursuing surplus Commonwealth land, in particular the former CSIRO Ginninderra field site, as the leaders get an update on the work under the housing accord, including new social housing plans.

Housing is a policy area of greater Commonwealth partnership with the states and territories, which has held up reform, but the ACT is looking for progress on Friday.

If there is time, surplus Commonwealth land that could be transferred to the territory for new housing developments will be raised.

"The national cabinet is not going to spend half an hour discussing an ACT (laughs) site," Mr Barr said.

"But certainly this is an area that we're progressing with the Commonwealth offline, and I will, if the opportunity arises, in that discussion again stress that the Commonwealth has a role to play in making some decisions around allowing their surplus land to be used for housing."

The ACT will certainly sign up to a "long overdue" move for national firearms reform.

The plan to address the way gun ownership information is collected and collated across states and territories comes in the wake of the fatal shooting of two Queensland police officers and a neighbour in December.

Mr Barr expects it will be easy "tick off".

"It's a jointly sponsored paper between the prime minister and Premier Palaszczuk. So I'm hopeful that would be the case, but we're certainly not going to be a barrier to that being being progressed," he said.

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