Tasmanian families will pay more for their power than they should despite the state moving to full retail competition (FRC) today, because both Labor and Liberal bungled the energy sector reforms, said Greens Leader and Energy spokesperson Kim Booth MP.
“The Greens said at the time that the refusal to introduce wholesale competition would result in the value of retail arm Aurora Energy, being diminished and that power prices would remain higher than they otherwise should be.”
“Although the Energy Regulator announced a decrease in power prices recently, that related to transmission costs and not costs relating to producing energy. The fact of the matter is that had there been full competition those prices could have been lower, and may have remained consistently lower into the future.”
“At the moment, due to the current FRC model we do not have actual competition in the market place yet.”
“Tasmanian power users have become captive to an empire-building Hydro, and a compliant government which apparently has little interest and no understanding of how competition works.”
“It is no surprise that on the first day of FRC that Aurora is still the main game, as potential buyers decided they didn’t want to play because of Hydro Tasmania’s market monopoly.”
“The longer term risk is that the best Aurora Energy accounts will be cherry-picked by short term retail entrants, leading to price increases for mums and dads.”
“Tasmanians disappointed that FRC brings little change and still end up suffering palpitations from their power bills, should think Liberal, and should think Labor,” Mr Booth said.