Labor hypocrites on power

The Government welcomes the Goanna Energy report released today.

It’s important that the independent Taskforce hears from a wide range of views.

The report highlights that the State experienced extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances during the summer.

The report also emphasises the significance of the decision to reduce the prudent water management level from 30 per cent to 25 per cent that happened under Bryan Green’ watch as Energy Minister. The report argues that the decision to reduce the prudent water management levels changed the risk management profile of the Hydro business and influenced decision making in subsequent years. It’s not good enough for Mr Green to continually ignore this important point.

Further, for Bryan Green to even mention power prices is absolutely galling. When Bryan Green was Energy Minister, power prices increased by 65 per cent. Power prices under the Hodgman Government are currently over two percent lower than when we came to Government and we are doing everything possible to keep downward pressure on prices.

The Economic Regulator, who is responsible for setting power prices in Tasmania, has said quite clearly that the Basslink outage and the Energy Supply Plan did not impact on regulated power prices. He said that:

“Given the regulated nature of wholesale electricity costs in Tasmania, the current Basslink outage and the actions taken to secure electricity supply have no impact on the regulated electricity prices that will apply from 1 July 2016 to residential and small business customers.” – Joe Dimasi, Economic Regulator, 22 June 2016

The fact is, in responding to an extraordinary set of circumstances of no rain and the Basslink outage, the Government achieved its key objectives: we kept the lights on; we kept power prices as low as possible and we protected the economy and Tasmanian jobs, including the jobs of the thousands of Tasmanians employed by the major energy consumers.

And to iterate, we did not, have not and will not sell the Tamar Valley Power Station. Full stop, end of story.
Matthew Groom, Minister for Energy