Power bills will soon rise by up to $25 – and that’s not due to weather
Even before it got colder, power bills in New Zealand and Australia were going to spike because regulators are increasing charges for the use of pylons, substations, poles and wires. But should they be?
Want to know who to thank for your crippling electricity price rises?
Why John Key of course!
You’ll remember he privatised 49% of our hydro power which created the market we are all suffering from now!
Look what part Privatisation has done to our electricity market…
Electricity sector privatisation is destroying manufacturing industry
In 2022 and 2023, First Union, the NZ Council of Trade Unions, and 350 Aotearoa released a series of reports entitled Generating Scarcity, about the impact of the partial privatisation of Meridian, Mighty River Power (now Mercury) and Genesis under the previous National government.
They argued that in the decade since those privatisations, the gentailers – Meridian, Mercury, Genesis and Contact (fully privatised in 1999) – paid out $10.8 billion in dividends to shareholders, while total generating capacity increased by one measly percent.
For every dollar invested in new capacity over that period, the gentailers paid out $2.41 in dividends. From 2016 to 2020, gentailer dividends were around four times the scale of new investment, while consented capacity simply wasn’t built.
Gentailer debt levels remain strikingly low, especially in light of last year’s gentailer-funded “The Future is Electric” report, whose own preferred investment pathway would see annual generating capacity increase by 163 percent in the coming 25 or so years.
Our grid leans heavily on hydro, and therefore needs an engineered solution to the so-called “dry year problem”. Hedging the network with wind, solar and battery storage is the cheapest fix, but it still costs money.
We all pay the price for underinvestment. With high mortgage rates and rising rents, low-income households can’t always afford to keep their homes warm and dry, lumping costs onto the struggling health system.
…so as you open your power bills and scream in shock at the prices, thank John Key and wonder how this current Government’s privatisation agenda will cost you in the future as well.
People are getting so close to realising…
…so close.
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It goes back further than that. The mid-90s electricity reforms were forced on us by Max Bradford, as spokesman for the Bolger government, privatising the local body owned power distribution networks, selling off assets owned by everyone, and creating a layer of middle-men ticket clippers that had not previously existed. And this was of course supposed to lower the power bill of every New Zilinder. Bwahahahaha.
Correct.
JOHN KEYS EFFORTS WERE THE FINAL NAIL.
And they are trying the same privatisation piracy with our water.
Such shameless bastards.
and succeeding in Auckland with water care and Wellington to follow soon .And they said maaari were stealing the water eh .How gullible are NZ voters ?
Sirkey deep throating a hot dog never gets old as a metaphor for his lifelong subservience to international finance capital.
Key and Max Bradford prior, handed over the electricity infrastructure decades of NZ workers and taxpayers built to private sector parasites.
It would be a vote winner for any parties that committed to renationalising power generation and supply, with compensation paid only if the gentailers piss off quietly.
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