State member for Orange, Andrew Gee, gets the latest Spin Watch award for his self-promoted heroic bid to stop the O’Farrell government from selling the network transmission – or pylons, poles, cables and switchers – of the NSW Electricity grid.
He told ABC News this week that he’d protested publicly against the sale of the network, along with the member for Bathurst, Paul Toole, because “I think that everyone in the Orange electorate and throughout the central west [has] had a gutful of high electricity prices.
“Paul and I, we stood up, and I like to think that we played at least a small role in stopping that sale proceeding, and I think it’s a win for regional NSW.”
Trouble is, it’s no win at all. Andrew Gee should know, and/or acknowledge, that the transmission network is already mainly responsible for a 42 percent rise in electricity prices, as it is, over the next two years.
So he and Paul O’Toole have been literally tilting at windmills in their joint stand on behalf of Central West householders.
Perhaps he should have read our maiden in-depth feature of Orange News Now, back in August.
Here’s what we wrote:
“Since the state’s energy providers were given the green light to raise their prices back in July, it’s estimated that our Central West householders are paying an average $316 per year more for electricity, compared with $216 for city families.
“This price hike, bringing an average (small) family’s annual bill in Orange up to around $2,000 or more, happened when the NSW Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal allowed the state’s 12 private energy suppliers to raise the prices they charge us by an average 17.3 percent. But that’s just the start of it. The complete price “revision” is actually a three-stage affair which will push prices up by nothing less than 42 percent over the next two years.
“POWER FOR PROFITS
“Why has this happened?
“As we all know, private companies means profits, and it should come as no surprise that the suppliers, or retailers, are now blaming increased costs loaded onto them by the network providers – the companies now responsible solely for poles, pylons, wiring and other technology required to carry power from one place to another. And these costs came about when the network providers decided they needed a $7.5 billion investment in network upgrading and expansion.
“The network side of the business is penalising Central West consumers in other ways. As with food, petrol and just about every other product that has to be trucked in from Sydney and elsewhere, electricity costs us more here in the state’s hinterland – so the industry says – because of the distances it has to come.
“Says Switchwise, one of a number of mainly online companies that have sprung up to offer deals for hard pressed consumers, “If you live in Sydney and its surrounding suburbs you will usually pay a lower supply charge per day and usage price per kWh (kilowatt hour) than someone living in, say, Dubbo. The prices differ to reflect the face that it costs less to supply a house in a big city compared to the country.”
“In fact, a full 50 percent of power bills in are made up of network charges, the cost of carrying electricity from the Hunter Valley, and according to Allan Jones, an international energy expert with Sydney City Council, “this percentage will rise to 60 percent over the next three years.”
SUMMARY: You’ve slammed the stable door, with considerable fanfare, Andrew, after the horse has bolted.
