Opposition to the National government’s plans to carve up the electricity ‘market’ even further continues to grow. Gerry Brownlee, meanwhile, continues to think he can just bluster his way through without dealing with the many substantive and valid concerns being raised.
The Press reports that Meridian Energy have written to SOE Minister Simon Power and Finance ministers Bill English and Steven Joyce informing them that the cost to the taxpayer of Brownlee’s proposed transfer of assets from Meridian to Genesis could be $80 million plus. Brownlee’s pitiful response was to say that the issue had been ‘extensively canvassed’. He then resorted to attacking the messenger, in much the same way he attacked PowerShop when they also raised concerns.
The Press also quotes Institute of Professional Engineers chief executive Andrew Cleland who argues forcing Meridian to hand over the Tekapo A and B power stations to Genesis would compromise the Waitaki system, making it less efficient resulting in a “lose-lose” for the consumer. Labour raised this very point during the First Reading of Brownlee’s Bill.
Gerry Brownlee seems to be playing with the energy SOEs as if they are toys. He has no real plan to deal with the flaws in the existing electricity market, he doesn’t seem to have grasped the detail of the portfolio and seems totally unwilling to engage with any reasoned argument. Unfortunately, it’s the consumer/taxpayer that will suffer the consequences.
Oh Dear. Gerry, who was an inspiration to secondary school woodwork teachers everywhere ( yes the National Caucus has some former teachers) that the ‘book end ceiling’ had been broken.
Was it not so long ago that Gerry was Maori affairs spokesman under Don Brash, just showing that he certainly is a jack of all trades.
I remain baffled on why such Gerry Brownlee is Minister of such complex portfolios as Economic Development, and Energy and Resources.
I have to agree with you Chris when you say “he doesn’t seem to have grasped the detail of the portfolio”, I fear he won’t grasp the detail anytime soon. He was opposition spokesperson on Energy – so he has had a number of years to get up to speed. And this is the speed he has reached.
I work in the energy sector and I have to disagree.
You and Meridian are highlighting the downsides of the Tekapo asset swap – which are real and worrying. Government knows this. But they are pushing the swap to resolve one of the biggest problems in NZ electricity market which is the lack of retail competition caused by the regional oligopolies of most incumbent retailers. So they are trying to create a new North Island retailer and a new South Island retailer and thus improve competiton. May or may not work, but it is a valid and credible option.
Even if the cost of the asset swap is $80m, the value of the competition improvements could be higher over time. I’d say the case is unproven so far and would prefer more analysis be done before change is made, but the fact Brownlee is pushing it suggests he does know what the market problem is and he’s trying to fix it.
The basic flaw in the existing electricity market is that there isn’t a market and no matter how much someone tries to increase competition in the sector it’s still not going to be a market. It’s a natural monopoly (possibly an oligopoly) for starters and, more importantly, it’s also a necessary community service.
We need to bring the whole lot back into state ownership and drop the dividends to government. Any profit that the sector does make will be fed back into the electricity grid to maintain and upgrade it.
Your http link is missing a h …
Good post though. Letting Brownlee in charge of power is really scary …
Thanks ms. Link corrected. Clare
Chippie, why don’t you do an OIA request and see if there was any official advice supporting Brownlee’s moves? If Brownlee is just playing with the market like they’re toys, then presumably he is evading the cabinet process and official policy development lines, and acting without proper advice. That is a big accusation to make without any evidence chippie.
Its a bit arrogant for a first term backbench opposition MP to accuse a senior minister of not knowing the detail and not getting advice if you cant back it up chippie.
Letting Brownlee in charge of power is really scary …
If that scares you Micky, and I don’t blame you, think about this. As Chris’s next post states:
168,000 New Zealanders are now unemployed
And who is the Minister in charge of Economic Development, supposedly to turn this nation’s economy around so these New Zealanders can get meaningful jobs? The Member for Ilam.
Even labour stopped calling MED the jobs machine after two years of anderton’s hype and empire building sean. another bunch o flabour spin that sounded nice but didnt have action behind it.
Even labour stopped calling MED the jobs machine after two years of anderton’s hype and empire building sean. another bunch o flabour spin that sounded nice but didnt have action behind it.
Jim isn’t a member of the Labour party obviously, I think the term you are looking for is ‘Alliance/Progressive hype’ Mel.
This leads me to ask, what in your view is the ministry’s purpose if not to develop New Zealand’s economy? Why wouldn’t we expect an improved New Zealand’s economy to deliver a number of positive outcomes, including increased employment? If it was just a spin exercise, why haven’t the National/ACT/Maori party government disestablished or re-aligned the ministry?
Also, while Jim Anderton was Minister of Economic Development from the start of the fifth Labour government up until Oct 2005. During this time the numbers of registered unemployed dropped from the 1999 216,714 down to 85,677 in 2005 (Statistic New Zealand Infoshare).
I’m pretty sure that Jim played is part in this, along with the rest of the government of the day.
How many jobs did anderton’s job machine create sean?
Thanks for asking that question Mel – just going by my previous statement
I’m pretty sure that Jim played is part in this, along with the rest of the government of the day.
Let’s divide the increased numbers in the work force over the period 1999-2009, Infoshare provides that information as being an increase of 318,300 people in employment.
Now, if we divide that number by the number of cabinet member in 2002, 29, we find Jim Anderton share is almost 11,000: Well done Jim!
Or you can admit that those statistics on the employment created by the Ministry of Economic Development have never been gathered, and to a large extent is not gatherable, and you are just trying to trap me.
Which bring me back to my question, which you didn’t answer: if you think that the Ministry of Economic Development is just a spin exercise, why hasn’t the National/ACT/Maori party government changed or done away with it?
Oh my, oh my.
I thought I’d found a political blog site which didn’t degenerate into tit for tat points scoring at every opportunity. Then I turned my back for five minutes and every thread had turned into a clone of the Stuff blogs.
Come on, people. Let’s try to have some loftier goals than just slogging it out for ‘our’ side. There are lots of places where this can be done already if it’s what you’re looking for.
It would really impress me if the Labour Party could host a site where their MPs were free to compliment some actions of politicians from the other side, for example. There must be something they do which is vaguely acceptable, surely?
In a matter of weeks I’ve noticed this site becoming more and more agressive and taken over by the usual sort of heavy mob. This sort of thing is a real turn off for ordinary people, and is one of the main reasons why politicians and activists are held in such low esteem (outside of a small circle of friends). It would really help to build bridges to the general public if posters were less dogmatic and gentler in their approach.
Just a thought.
At the moment what I see here is a great and worthy experiment which is beginning to go bad. Please don’t let this happen.
Good points George. There have been posts on Red Alert where Labour MPs already complimented Government MPs on their actions – when appropriate. You may have missed them, they were more common before the Summer break because more was being done by the government then.
Fair comment, Sean. I haven’t been round that long and haven’t dug back into the archive that far.
I just sense that over the past few days things have started to become more heated and that it was detracting from what had been a fairly well ordered atmosphere.
After frequenting this place for a few weeks I nipped back into Espiner and Minto’s blogs on Stuff and it was so depressing to see the same people having the same arguements as they had been for years. And in such agressive, disrespectful and impolite tones. So much noise, so little light.
I hope that this blog isn’t allowed to fall that far.
Trev spoke about it being like having a guest in your home. It’s a very good analogy for how I think this place should operate. If someone’s in your home and says something you don’t like, but in a genuine way then however misguided you thought they were you wouldn’t jump down their throat, or run to your briefcase, take out a voluminous report and start quoting it to them in long chunks, would you? You’d still probably stand your corner, but it would be in a gentler way.
Perhaps we could all imagine, as we write, that we’re addressing someone who’s sitting across a coffee table from us. And someone who we don’t hate so much we’d like to see them disposed of without really bothering much about the method used. It might help us to generate mutual understanding which, even if it doesn’t convert us would at least give us a genuine feeling of where we’re all coming from. We’d all be the stonger for that.
Few of us are genuinely stupid or evil, yet to read most political blogs you’d think there’s no other sort of person on the planet!
Yep, I have to agree with you George that there are blogs where the discussion threads just aren’t worth the time to go over. And I worried when this site was set up, it would fall into that catagory.
The reason I worried that is political blogs on the whole draw an intense crowd, who think everyone who disagrees with them as being deluded. In the case of a blog such as this, where so many Labour Party MPs are going public, I feared in addition to this organised trolling would be attracted.
Sure, things seemed to have gotten more furious over the last couple of weeks, but I do remember some of the bannings last year. Bannings, which were well deserved, and despite the protestations of the banned, applied after ample warnings had been given, and moderation had been tried.
The RedAlert team run a tight blog: while they accept outright disagreement even when unnecessarily unpleasant, they can spot trolls, and politically planted commentators, and have called them on disruptive activity. There is a clear line, and if commentators go over that, the moderators will pull them up.
The guest in the home image is not a bad idea to keep in mind. Personally, I will try and bear it in mind myself.
I think putting Brownlee in charge of anything is scary,
Let us not forget that he was charged for assaulting an old age pensioner , and found guilty . Should we consider and are we able to bring all electricty back into goverments hands ,because that is the answer , Make it a service to the people . Nationalization may be a dirty word to some but the fact is some services should and must be returned governmment control.