David Killick Mercury
HYDRO Tasmania is praying for rain as its balance sheet continues to go down the drain. Releasing the 2006-07 financial results yesterday, Hydro chairman David Crean blamed the drought for a significant worsening of the government business enterprise’s fortunes. A year after Auditor-General Mike Blake expressed concern the company’s balance sheet was tight, Dr Crean revealed profit had dropped 41 per cent to $19.5 million, net debt had increased by $80 million to $1.141 billion and dams remained just 31 per cent full.
That’s the spin … you want the truth? Look no further than the supreme reporting over many years of former Sunday Tasmanian investigative journalist Simon Bevilacqua:
The Energy Disaster
Tasmanian Times’ own Bachus H. Barren has been tracking this ineptitude for as long as Bevilacqua. His conclusion, way back in January last year:
Critics have noted that it would appear that the disastrous state of energy policy in Tasmania has been overseen by politicians with the performance and intellectual capacity of the Keystone Cops. In turn, technical advice on energy policy has been provided to politicians by a comfortable clique of bureaucrats with limited, if any, experience in the cut-and-thrust of national and international deregulated electricity markets.
When one considers the chaos of Tasmanian energy and the faces in the crowds of the Hobart Show, it is easy to be reminded of the old London Times lithographs of the faces of the un-knowing passengers aboard the Edinburgh Express as it rocketed towards the gaping chasm of the collapsing Tay Bridge on that fateful December night in 1879.
The full story at:
Basslink: the ongoing disaster
Basslink and bungled power policy
Basslink backfires: buying dirty power
Bell Bay: another bungle
