SELLING power too cheaply to industrial users is costing the Government up to $220 million in revenue every year.
That is the stark conclusion of the state’s visions guru, Professor Jonathan West, whose long-waited Innovations Strategy for Tasmania report was handed to Premier David Bartlett yesterday.
Other bold ideas outlined in the report include shifting the University of Tasmania to the Hobart waterfront and building its new campus entirely of stone, ending the ban on growing genetically modified crops and holding a competition with a $10 million prize for the best future business model for the state.
Prof West, head of the Hobart-based Australian Innovation Research Centre, said the good news contained in his report was that for Tasmania to enjoy prosperity in the future, no radical “gut-wrenching” transformation was required.
Instead, he contests that many of his visions for a better future hold the added bonus of ending the perpetual conflict between jobs and the environment that has split Tasmania in the past.
“This is a good-news, practical report that if implemented can guarantee the social and economic benefits we all want to enjoy and overcome the divisions of the past,” Prof West said.
As a priority, he believes, the Government must consider axing its hefty electricity subsidies to the Comalco and Temco smelters at Bell Bay and the Nyrstar zinc works in Hobart.
His report outlines how the three ore smelters and metal works consume two-thirds of Tasmania’s annual power generation, but pay less for their electricity than its cost of production.
One of the most far-reaching recommendations of Prof West’s report is his call for the Bartlett Government to rethink this costly strategy, either ending the subsidies or selling the power at higher prices interstate.
He points out that the three smelters and their associated plants employ 1400 people, many fewer than when their long-term power deals were signed.
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Sue Neales, Mercury
