HEFTY power bills from Aurora are an unfortunate part of life for everyone living in Tasmania connected to mains power.
Bills of $400-$500 a quarter for even small households are considered normal.
And such savage bills risk becoming only more alarming given the 20 per cent electricity price hike by the monopoly provider to domestic consumers last year and the extra 7 per cent jump looming in the coming year.
But rather than groaning in horror, perhaps it is time ordinary Tasmanians had a serious think about why their power bills really are so high.
Simply, is the community still happy for the Government to provide massively subsidised cheap power to three or four big industrial businesses in the state at below the cost of the production of that electricity?
Is the average small householder willing to pay grossly inflated power prices to partly compensate Hydro Tasmania for having to sell its power at loss-making prices to power-intensive heavy industry?
Is the taxpayer also prepared, uncomplainingly, to fork out more than $120 million directly from government coffers in times of drought or water shortage — as we did last year — to buy in power from Victoria just to ensure industrial power needs are met, even when the purchase is never reimbursed by the corporations concerned?
And is Tasmanian society content for the Government to sell our precious clean green hydro electricity at a loss when it could be sold on the mainland at much higher prices via the national grid?
Economists estimate that the same power now sold at a loss to just the three heaviest users in the state would generate an extra $250 million a year for government coffers if sold at market rates interstate; money that could be spent on hospitals, schools and community services.
Put simply, are the benefits of keeping four or five old-fashioned heavy industries in Tasmania — ones that are located here only because of ridiculously under-priced power contracts negotiated with the Government decades ago — worth it?
