Speaker 1: CHIELDA.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast.
Speaker 1: Presented by the New Zealand Herald.
Speaker 2: A local election begins today in Auckland. Though you're probably
Speaker 2: not even aware, three hundred and sixty four thousand Auckland
Speaker 2: households and businesses can vote this month for the trust
Speaker 2: board that runs en Trust.
Speaker 1: If this name.
Speaker 2: Sounds familiar to Auckland's, it's because the majority shareholder of
Speaker 2: Victor dishes out dividend payments to eligible electricity account holders
Speaker 2: every year. Yet very few of us actually vote in
Speaker 2: these elections, with voter turnout hitting single digits in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one. Today, on the front page, Herald's senior writer
Speaker 2: Simon Wilson.
Speaker 1: Is with us to us why you should be paying attention.
Speaker 2: Simon, First off, can you explain to me what intrust
Speaker 2: actually is, because all I know is that I get
Speaker 2: a three hundred and fifty bucks a year.
Speaker 3: It's a ridiculously complicated situation, and that's one of the
Speaker 3: problems that these things should be easy. It's a trust.
Speaker 3: It's a community trust, which means that the customers who
Speaker 3: are the people who use the lines that deliver power
Speaker 3: to Auckland are the owners of the trust. Intrust used
Speaker 3: to be called the Auckland Energy Consumer Trust. They changed
Speaker 3: their name to the Snappier In Trust a few years ago,
Speaker 3: and it owns the company that owns the lines. The
Speaker 3: lines company is Vector. So if you look at your
Speaker 3: power bill, you'll see there's a component in that. If
Speaker 3: you get it from Mercury, say, there's a component in
Speaker 3: that that says the lines charged from Vector is whatever
Speaker 3: it is. Intrust owns most of Vector. There are no
Speaker 3: other large scale owners of Vector. So interests and effect
Speaker 3: owns Vector. And because it's a trust, it has to
Speaker 3: have elections for its trust board, the trustees, and they
Speaker 3: come along every three years.
Speaker 2: Why are electricity users considered investors?
Speaker 1: How did that come about?
Speaker 3: Well, it goes all the way back to the fact
Speaker 3: that in this country power energy and electricity used to
Speaker 3: be state owned. So in the process of the government
Speaker 3: divesting its ownership of the whole power system in the
Speaker 3: eighties and nineties, we ended up with some consumer trusts
Speaker 3: and that was part of the way of saying okay,
Speaker 3: private investors and come in, they can own this and
Speaker 3: they can do what they want with these things. But
Speaker 3: there will still be community ownership. So that's why there
Speaker 3: are community trusts. En Trust is the big one in Auckland,
Speaker 3: but there are other community trusts related to the Lin's
Speaker 3: companies in other parts of the country.
Speaker 1: You mentioned elections.
Speaker 2: How often do they happen and why should auckland Is
Speaker 2: be paying attention?
Speaker 3: The elections happen every three years and the way in
Speaker 3: which they are set up at the moment. Every year,
Speaker 3: the Interrust Board for men years now has paid a
Speaker 3: dividend to its beneficiary, so that's us the power will payers.
Speaker 3: It pays that dividend, and shortly after it pays the
Speaker 3: dividend on a three year cycle, we get a chance
Speaker 3: to vote for them to do it again.
Speaker 2: I don't suppose many people know about these elections. I
Speaker 2: suppose what has voter turnout been like in the past.
Speaker 3: Six years ago, voter turnout was a low seventeen percent.
Speaker 3: Three years ago it dropped to nine percent. And one
Speaker 3: of the issues around the election this time is that
Speaker 3: you would think that people in charge of the elections
Speaker 3: and effectively that is the existing trustees who were elected
Speaker 3: in last time, you would think they'd be worried about
Speaker 3: that low turnout, and you would think they would do
Speaker 3: something to grow the numbers better, advertising that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: They do nothing, almost nothing. So we have this very
Speaker 3: low turnout and that suits the people who are there
Speaker 3: because they got elected last time on a low turnout.
Speaker 3: By and large, they are voters from the Auckland's eastern suburbs,
Speaker 3: from Uera, epsom Cohimatmer, et cetera. They are a well held,
Speaker 3: high voting lot compared to the rest of the city,
Speaker 3: and the Entrust trustees who've been elected by those people
Speaker 3: appear to be quite happy for that to continue.
Speaker 1: Well should it continue?
Speaker 2: Have they? Have?
Speaker 1: They been doing a good job simon.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends how you look at it. Let's look
Speaker 3: firstly at the money. Intrust has been paying this dividend
Speaker 3: to the bill payers for a long time now. In
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, which is when the current structure
Speaker 3: was established, the dividend was three hundred and ten dollars
Speaker 3: every year. Thereafter, for the next six years it fell
Speaker 3: in real terms, then it grew for a little bit,
Speaker 3: but from twenty eighteen it's been falling and falling in
Speaker 3: real terms, so that three hundred and ten dollars in
Speaker 3: two thousand and six nearly twenty years ago is now
Speaker 3: three hundred and fifty dollars this year. If you look
Speaker 3: at the effect of inflation, if you use the Reserve
Speaker 3: Banks calculator and put three hundred and ten dollars in
Speaker 3: two thousand and six into the calculator and see what
Speaker 3: it should be worth now, they should be paying US
Speaker 3: four hundred and eighty three dollars, not three hundred and fifty.
Speaker 3: So actually the dividend has been declining in real terms,
Speaker 3: and in my own view that's a bit of a
Speaker 3: scandal that it's reducing and reducing and reducing.
Speaker 2: Once a year intrust beneficiaries receive dividends. Dividend day, you know,
Speaker 2: is the invalope that makes you say yes, freaksh cheers
Speaker 2: and trust.
Speaker 1: Have they given any explanation for that?
Speaker 3: Well. Power is difficult and complex, but at the same time,
Speaker 3: of course, our power bills are going up. They're going
Speaker 3: to go up significantly next year, we're told by the industry,
Speaker 3: and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have advised
Speaker 3: the government they're going to go up next year and
Speaker 3: the year after. So we're getting a declining dividend and
Speaker 3: rising power bills. It's pretty unsatisfactory situation.
Speaker 2: So the communities and residents teke At have run the
Speaker 2: board for as long as it's been a thing. Are
Speaker 2: they promising to do anything differently? Or do they want
Speaker 2: to keep things as is?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: They're not that. They promote themselves on the basis of
Speaker 3: we give you three hundred and fifty bucks this year.
Speaker 3: Their billboards say three hundred and fifty dollars safe with
Speaker 3: cn R. CNR is the national party in Auckland, and
Speaker 3: they're very comfortable with that being the key thing that
Speaker 3: they do. And you've got to say, actually, that doesn't
Speaker 3: look like good business practice. These are business people, now,
Speaker 3: experienced business people. But if this is an ordinary company,
Speaker 3: ordinary shareholders would almost certainly not be at all happy
Speaker 3: with that return.
Speaker 1: Who are the other players here? What are they promising?
Speaker 3: So there are seven other candidates. Two of them are independents,
Speaker 3: one of them is a former c and R trustee
Speaker 3: who fell out with the group and is now standing
Speaker 3: against them. And then the remaining five belong to a
Speaker 3: group called More for You, Better for Auckland, Better for Short.
Speaker 3: They are largely aligned or sympathetic to labor slash green politics.
Speaker 3: So that you've got straight on the left and on
Speaker 3: the right split in this election. Thus, those two independents
Speaker 3: and the Better Group argue that there should be a
Speaker 3: better dividend. They argue power prices shouldn't be going up
Speaker 3: so much, and they have a proposal to address both
Speaker 3: those issues and at the same time increase security of
Speaker 3: supply because Aucklanders will know that when the wind blows,
Speaker 3: the power loans are in trouble, and that happens over
Speaker 3: and over in the city. Of course, a security is
Speaker 3: supply and at the same time also lower our emissions
Speaker 3: because our power grid at the moment is dependent on
Speaker 3: colon gas for a proportion of the power that is supplied.
Speaker 3: So what the Better Group is saying is why don't
Speaker 3: we roll out solar energy on rooftops.
Speaker 2: A little under a month ago, those people who are
Speaker 2: eligible to vote received their dividend from Intrust. I've read
Speaker 2: your piece in the Herald this week and see you're
Speaker 2: not very happy about the timing of this.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's extraordinary. Effectively, what happens is that
Speaker 3: the sitting members of the Trust board pay people, advertise
Speaker 3: the fact that they've paid you, and then ask for
Speaker 3: your vote. It's impossible to imagine that that would be
Speaker 3: acceptable in a general election or a council election in
Speaker 3: the main ways in which we exercise democracy in this country.
Speaker 3: But they're allowed. It's not illegal. They're doing it legally,
Speaker 3: But in my own view, it's far far from ethical.
Speaker 2: Well, could national crow from the rooftops that they gave
Speaker 2: us a tax cut and then ask for our vote?
Speaker 1: Is it not the same thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you can call that a bribe in
Speaker 3: a loose sense, but you've got to put that in
Speaker 3: the context that there's a full blown political debate that
Speaker 3: goes on in general elections about how much we should
Speaker 3: be taxed, where the money should be spent, who's responsible
Speaker 3: for what, all of those things. So you can put
Speaker 3: that into that larger debate and say, okay, even if
Speaker 3: you think it's wrong to promise people tax cuts for
Speaker 3: their vote, at the same time, there is a big
Speaker 3: political debate about it. That's very different from the entrust situation,
Speaker 3: where almost the only thing that anybody knows about Terrust,
Speaker 3: if they know anything at all, is oh, that's the
Speaker 3: group that gave me three hundred and fifty bucks, full stop,
Speaker 3: whereas the better people are saying, actually, that's just a
Speaker 3: red hearing that should be bigger, that your powerbles should
Speaker 3: be lower, and if we had a roll out of
Speaker 3: solar we would have made a significant difference to security
Speaker 3: supply and lowering emissions.
Speaker 2: Well, I will say that when I googled Entrust Elections
Speaker 2: while researching this episode, the top result is, of course
Speaker 2: the en Trust site, and when you click on the
Speaker 2: Entrust Elections link, a big, massive pop up ad about
Speaker 2: the three undred and fifty dollars dividend does appear.
Speaker 1: And when I say big pop up for that, doesn't
Speaker 1: it absolutely feel you have seen it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like shameless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why do you think this country is so resistant
Speaker 2: to installing solar panels?
Speaker 1: And how could and trust change this?
Speaker 3: It's really interesting, isn't it, Because we've had some poor
Speaker 3: experiences in the past. Solar was hard to install, some
Speaker 3: of the equipment wasn't very reliable, batteries were expensive, and
Speaker 3: the memory of all that kind of thing lingers, and
Speaker 3: there's a whole bunch of people who think it just
Speaker 3: won't work, just how could it work? What we are
Speaker 3: lucky about in Auckland is that we can look across
Speaker 3: the Tasman at Australia Australia has around about thirty five
Speaker 3: percent of its rooftops now have solar panels on them,
Speaker 3: many with batteries. Now that statistic doesn't just apply in
Speaker 3: Queensland or wherever the sunshines all the time. It applies
Speaker 3: in Melbourne. Melbourne has about the same amount of sunshine
Speaker 3: hours a year as Auckland, very very similar. Melbourne has
Speaker 3: thirty five percent of its roofs have sola on them,
Speaker 3: and that's because they have incentivized people to buy the equipment,
Speaker 3: or they have made it possible for people to lease it,
Speaker 3: or that the power companies themselves have retained ownership and
Speaker 3: given people the use of it. Those models are all
Speaker 3: available in Auckland, all available to interest, and could really
Speaker 3: change the game here. It would mean that there's an
Speaker 3: organization that has done the numbers on this. It could
Speaker 3: mean that you might pay as little as a sixth
Speaker 3: of your current power pill thirty four cents of Killer
Speaker 3: what hour at the moment, down to six cents killer
Speaker 3: what hour. If you were paying off the loan to
Speaker 3: get the equipment, it might be twelve cents an hour.
Speaker 3: That's phenomenally different from what we currently have. So we
Speaker 3: could have lower power pills and be doing our bit
Speaker 3: for the planet and have more security of supply. Because
Speaker 3: of course, in a storm, though it's possible your solar
Speaker 3: panels won't work, might get blown off the roof, that's
Speaker 3: not really likely. It's far far less likely than a
Speaker 3: tree bringing down the powerlights. You just wouldn't have that
Speaker 3: worry anymore.
Speaker 4: Unplanned power rateagues are never fun, especially during a storm.
Speaker 4: It's stressful for everyone involved. Everything Vector does during an
Speaker 4: outage is to keep our crews and you safe and
Speaker 4: to get the lights back on as quickly as possible.
Speaker 5: Getting rid of power poles helps prevent serious accidents, It
Speaker 5: makes our grid more resilient to storms and other natural
Speaker 5: disasters wells, and it keeps our cydewalks free for people.
Speaker 2: And so how can Entrust help facilitate this? Can they
Speaker 2: offer subsidies alone?
Speaker 3: Yes, they can. They can set it up so that
Speaker 3: they can provide the financial incentives and support for this
Speaker 3: to happen. And it's not just domestic, aren't they. I
Speaker 3: mean you could do it for your own roof, and
Speaker 3: if you're flatting your land or could do it, or
Speaker 3: you could get your land or to do it. But
Speaker 3: it's also community groups like schools and maria and sports
Speaker 3: clubs and community halls and so on could all do it.
Speaker 3: And then industrial buildings. So you think about when you
Speaker 3: fly into Auckland, there's hectores and hectares of empty white
Speaker 3: rus they could all have solar on them. That would
Speaker 3: make a massive difference. Entrust calculates they could build a
Speaker 3: bigger connected plant of distributed energy on those commercial roofs,
Speaker 3: bigger than Huntly, bigger than any of the South Lonlond dams.
Speaker 1: Would that mean the end of our dividends though each year?
Speaker 3: No, it wouldn't.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't.
Speaker 3: No, it wouldn't know because now, why aren't they doing it?
Speaker 1: Simon?
Speaker 3: It is such a good question, And I don't know
Speaker 3: the answer to that except that there's an enormous resistance
Speaker 3: to change, and there's enormous resistance to the idea that
Speaker 3: we should be doing anything except for what is working
Speaker 3: for those trustees at the moment. And that's a problem
Speaker 3: for this country and lots of areas, and in this
Speaker 3: particular area, it's a really massive problem when you think
Speaker 3: about it in terms of what are we going to
Speaker 3: do about growing climate crisis. Dunedan's just experienced at Pauling flooding.
Speaker 3: That's the latest. We know that. It just happens and
Speaker 3: happens and happens in this country and in other countries
Speaker 3: much worse. America's about to get its biggest cyclone. They
Speaker 3: think the century or is it ever extraordinary? There? We
Speaker 3: do have to change. We do have to actually do
Speaker 3: something about our emissions. We do have to do something
Speaker 3: about the resilience of our infrastructure so that it's not
Speaker 3: so subject to being damaged and taken out by storms.
Speaker 3: We do have to do these things. And if we
Speaker 3: can do them in a way that will end up
Speaker 3: being cheaper for us, how fantastic that would be.
Speaker 1: Well, what are the downsides of installing solar panel though.
Speaker 3: Well, if you like the look of your roof now
Speaker 3: and you don't think it will look so good with
Speaker 3: solar panels on it, then I guess that might be
Speaker 3: a downside.
Speaker 2: But in terms of the kind of debate sigmen, I
Speaker 2: can see the other side of cycle lanes, right. We
Speaker 2: love our cars, we love our space and our roads.
Speaker 2: Cycle lanes equals drama. But solar panels, what is the negative?
Speaker 3: What is It's not transactional? Is it in any way,
Speaker 3: and it's the other side of it. Of course, we
Speaker 3: don't have a large scale solar panel industry in this
Speaker 3: country at the moment, doesn't mean we can't build one.
Speaker 3: Australia has an enormous one, the world leader, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I can remember that those subsidies coming through even when
Speaker 2: I lived in Australia, so ten fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: So we're very well behind, which we sure are.
Speaker 3: And we like to think that Australia are nasty coal mining,
Speaker 3: which is true of course, but actually if you look
Speaker 3: at what Australia has done there, it is massively significant.
Speaker 3: And you think about the hundreds and hundreds of jobs
Speaker 3: that could be created in Auckland and then roll it
Speaker 3: out nationwide. Then they're good jobs. There's skilled jobs, and
Speaker 3: they're going.
Speaker 2: To go on. Do you think in the wake of,
Speaker 2: like we said before, the severe weather events of last year,
Speaker 2: and of course what's happening in the US at the moment,
Speaker 2: we need to look at undergrounding more of the power network,
Speaker 2: regardless of who gets in.
Speaker 3: Undergrounding is a complicated issue, firstly because it's expensive. Secondly
Speaker 3: because retrofitting undergrounding, taking out the wires and digging up
Speaker 3: the streets and putting in.
Speaker 1: The underground's disruptive.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly disruptive. So the expense in the disruption make
Speaker 3: it a difficult prospect. New subdivisions, new areas of housing
Speaker 3: should definitely have undergrounded lines, and that is largely what
Speaker 3: happens now. But if you're talking about existing suburbs, there's
Speaker 3: a massive operation which would be extremely expensive, will go
Speaker 3: straight on your power bill. And also underground lines are harder,
Speaker 3: of course to service because they're hard to get it.
Speaker 1: And you know what would be cheaper and better, Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do. Actually it's called solility.
Speaker 2: So simon, how are we going to make people care
Speaker 2: about this election, regardless of who they want to vote for?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's not just our job, I guess
Speaker 3: to make people care. I would like to think that
Speaker 3: people were listening and reading the newspaper and thinking about
Speaker 3: these things, and I would like to think there was
Speaker 3: growing media attention. This week, the voting papers will be
Speaker 3: arriving in Aucklander's letterboxes and they're only going to get
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks, a very short period time to voters. Well,
Speaker 3: so hopefully it'll all ramp up over the next couple
Speaker 3: of weeks. And I guess I should also say it's
Speaker 3: not the whole of Auckland. Older listeners will know the
Speaker 3: old Auckland City Council and old Monacow Council and Papakura
Speaker 3: District Board areas. That's who it covers. So that's mainly
Speaker 3: isthmus Auckland from Avondale all the way out to the
Speaker 3: Perth of Thames and from Otahou North up to the
Speaker 3: Harbor Bridge.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Simon. That said, for this episode
Speaker 2: of the Front Page. You can read more about today's
Speaker 2: stories and extensive news coverage at anzat Herald dot co
Speaker 2: dot z. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Seals
Speaker 2: with sound engineer Patty Fox.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts, and tune
Speaker 1: In tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.