A state Labor government would re-regulate electricity prices and bring down costs to consumers, according to Lismore candidate Janelle Saffin.
Ms Saffin said that if elected, ‘we will intervene decisively to re-regulate electricity prices’’.
‘A new damning report from the NSW Energy and Water Ombudsman reveals what we all suspected: that the NSW electricity market is broken and is not working for us.’
‘The gouging by the energy companies and related services is a shocker,’ Ms Saffin said.
‘The Ombudsman has exposed the practice of offering discounts on prices that have already been inflated.’
‘Many thousands of families and small businesses in the Lismore electorate are hurting.’
‘Complaints are soaring – 60 per cent about billing and costs. I hear far too many hardship stories.’
‘Energy companies got a bonanza from the state Nationals and Liberals.’
‘In New South Wales, the Liberals and Nationals could hardly wait to sell off the electricity poles and wires, thus privatising the operation and gifting profits to shareholders in exchange for a huge bucket of money which has now been spent.’
‘And, as you probably guessed, the 30 per cent of people who live outside of Sydney in regional New South Wales saw very little of that money.’
She accused incumbent Thomas George (Nationals) of assuring country people that privatisation ‘would make prices cheaper and that profits from the sale would come to country New South Wales’.
She added the government’s ‘continued refusal to intervene to stop the cost-of-living spiral’ regarding electricity prices ‘will drive our electricity bills up’.
‘They could not wait to flog off the poles and wires to the corporates and then let them run rampant with deregulated pricing,’ Ms Saffin said.
Find it hard to believe that NSW Labor, if it wins government next year, will keep this promise. The ALP is just as enslaved to neo-liberal “free market” economics as the COALition. Under Foley they have drifted even further to the right.
How about Labor committing to no new coal or gas mines in NSW and a massive, urgent rollout of renewable energy and storage infrastructure to replace fossil fuels? Why not aim to make this State 100% carbon neutral by 2030?
Sorry, Janelle, but neither your mob nor the toxic COALition will ever do what is necessary to stop climate catastrophe.
Anyone who cares for the future well-being of people and planet will be voting Greens in Lismore in 2019.
Janelle is so right. Selling off essential public facilities for private profit should never ever have occurred. There can be no justification for gouging money from families and businesses. And then to tell us that it is our responsibility to contact them to arrange a discount !
I’m glad the Ombudsman has exposed the blatant nature of their actions.
It’s a mess and good on you Janelle for your (effective) lobbying to rein these shockers in.
No thanks to the dead hand of the National MPs who assured us privatising the poles and wires would lead to a reduction in electricity prices. They should live to regret that lie.