Media release – TasNetworks, 17 May 2024
TasNetworks Committed to Supporting Tasmanians Through Efficient and Responsible Energy Management
TasNetworks expects our annual pricing proposal to be published by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) today. The proposal details network charges for residential and small business (distribution) customers for the 2024-25 financial year.
TasNetworks’ network charges are just one of six costs that make up a typical Tasmanian power bill, accounting for approximately a third of the total bill cost.
CEO, Dr Seán McGoldrick, noted the business has proposed a 15% adjustment in distribution network charges for the coming year to continue providing Tasmanians with clean, safe, and reliable electricity for their homes and businesses.
“These are challenging economic times, but TasNetworks’ Board and our people remain committed to protecting the wellbeing of Tasmanians. We’ll be cutting our operating expenses by three percent next year, passing those benefits onto our customers,” he said.
Dr. McGoldrick added the adjustments have been driven by inflation and cost pressures from increasing insurance premiums and cybersecurity expenses, but added this also comes on the back of significant reductions in network charges in recent years. He noted these efforts are part of the broader strategy to help Tasmania double its clean energy capacity in the coming decades, aiming to secure the lowest possible future power prices for our customers.
The Office of the Tasmanian Economic Regulator (OTTER) is responsible for determining Tasmania’s electricity price each year, and takes into account network charges along with other costs such as generation, metering and retail. As TasNetworks’ proposed increase of 15 per cent to network distribution charges is only a proportion of electricity bills, the final overall price of electricity in Tasmania for 2024/2025 will be confirmed by OTTER in June.
For a copy of our pricing proposals, please head to our website.
This is another example of Sean McGoldrick’s PR writers hard at work covering the bad management of TasNetworks’ executive, ie. it’s just more bollocks from the usual corporate gobshite.
TasNetworks is already implicated in price gouging via ‘supernormal profit taking’, that is – 8-10% over and above ‘reasonable’ transmission company profits. Worse, having spent many tens of millions on Project Marinus (some on design and engineering, but far more on the ongoing PR campaign), they’re preparing to add even more to our bills to pay for the ‘North West Transmission Development’ – the vast new grid to ship private wind energy to the mainland market via Marinus Link.
In other words, TasNetworks is shameless in conning and exploiting a captive market – namely us – while piously claiming to be (a) at the merciless whim of inflation, (b) helping provide us with ‘clean’ energy, and (c) doing its damnedest to ‘cut operating costs’ for our benefit.
TasNetworks is gouging us because it can, and no one will hold it to account – neither major party, nor the corporate media which runs interference for them.
They’re not helping Tasmania with renewable energy either – they’re helping our government, TasNet’s shareholder, subsidise foreign-owned wind farm investors to set up and ship THEIR energy (not Tasmania’s) to the NEM.
As for ‘cutting operating costs’, McGoldrick’s merely continuing his predecessor’s cynical strategy of outsourcing core TasNetworks’ functions to the lowest bidder, thus forcing down blue collar wages.
If McGoldrick or his trough-swilling cronies’ lips are moving .. they’re lying.
– Ben Marshall
Ben Marshall
May 17, 2024 at 13:54
This is another example of Sean McGoldrick’s PR writers hard at work covering the bad management of TasNetworks’ executive, that is, it’s just more bollocks from the usual corporate gobshite*.
TasNetworks is already implicated in price gouging via ‘supernormal profit taking’, that is – 8-10% over and above ‘reasonable’ transmission company profits. Worse, having spent many tens of millions on Project Marinus (some on design and engineering, but far more on the ongoing PR campaign), they’re preparing to add even more to our bills to pay for the ‘North West Transmission Development’ – the vast new grid to ship private wind energy to the Mainland market via Marinus Link.
In other words, TasNetworks is shameless in conning and exploiting a captive market – namely us – while piously claiming to be (a) at the merciless whim of inflation, and (b) helping provide us with “clean” energy, and (c) doing its damnedest to ‘cut operating costs’ for our benefit.
TasNetworks is gouging us because it can, and no one will hold it to account – neither major party, nor the corporate media which runs interference for them.
They’re not helping Tasmania with renewable energy either – they’re helping our government, TasNet’s shareholder, subsidise foreign-owned wind farm investors to set up and ship THEIR energy (not Tasmania’s) to the NEM.
As for ‘cutting operating costs’, McGoldrick’s merely continuing his predecessor’s cynical strategy of outsourcing core TasNetworks’ functions to the lowest bidder, thus forcing down blue collar wages.
If McGoldrick or his trough-swilling cronies’ lips are moving .. then they’re lying!
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*gobshite refers to one who engages in nonsensical chatter or unwanted conversation.
Gordon Bradbury
May 18, 2024 at 14:55
Why are Tasmanian taxpayers paying for this state to double its electricity generating capacity, thereby generating that which Tasmania does not need?
How can the Economic Regulator allow such blatant price gouging and market dominance?
Ben Marshall
May 19, 2024 at 11:01
Gordon, my understanding is that …
(a) .. Price gouging is a pretty standard corporate business model on the basis that no one is holding you to account, and if they do, you can apologise, pay a small fine, and continue on your way.
(b) .. The economic regulators, such as they are, operate on narrow parameters within the confines of a market system according to the short-term needs of political-corporate pressure – think corporate State-capture.
(c) .. Tasmanians, broadly speaking, do need more renewable energy with which to electrify (decarbonise) our broader economy etc, but any new energy is, and will be, privately owned, and will be bought by the power-trading State-owned company, TasHydro at a guaranteed profit to the investors, then traded on the National Energy Market, that is, the energy we need is being given away, at our cost, and later repurchased from the Market via TasHydro market speculation for local need. The sole shareholder of TasNetworks and TasHydro, namely the State government, hopes to attract renewable investors to increase the flow of money within this market system, and thereby take a cut of it.
This stunning set of rotten planning and corporate control is all legal, and all of it, in its entirely, is corrupt.
Gordon Bradbury
May 20, 2024 at 12:30
How do we know that the state government won’t take another ‘special dividend’ from TasNetworks with this extra money then disappearing into the black hole that is the Tasmanian State Treasury?
The state government is absolutely desperate for cash. It will use every trick in the book to siphon money from poor Tasmanians.
Thinker
May 20, 2024 at 16:59
Gordon, you can relax. Tasmania is not a ‘failed state’.
Not yet.
It’s a Work in Progress that’s still in the pipeline.
After Christmas.
Perhaps.
Ben Marshall
May 21, 2024 at 11:22
Gordon, regarding TasNetworks’ shareholders …
With the Minister and the Treasurer, it’s fair to say that ‘efficiency dividends’ flowing to them from State Owned Companies and Government Business Enterprises, are the point of these former public utilities. The government is using them as cash cows, where infrastructure and other subsidising costs are being paid for by us.
The main extractive industry in Tasmania isn’t mining, forestry or agriculture. It is exploiting us.
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Ben, please introduce your acronyms to our readers with their full word expansion in the paragraph where you first mention them. For example, don’t use ‘GBEs’ or ‘SoCs’ there, but rather type ‘Government Business Enterprises (GBEs)’ and ‘State-owned Companies (SoCs)’
Thereafter the acronym is fine.
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