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Speaker 1: Sales for the electricity, gas, waste and water services industry

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Speaker 1: up thirty six percent in the June quarter. That's on

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Speaker 1: the same time last year. This is from stats end Z.

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Speaker 1: They put it down to the energy crunch. So no

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Speaker 1: rain for the lakes, it's cold, we're using more electricity.

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Speaker 1: The gas storage problem, the gas issue. It comes on

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Speaker 1: the back of the Windstone Pulp International closures yesterday. Two

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Speaker 1: hundred and thirty jobs have been lost there. John Harbard

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Speaker 1: is the Major Electricity Users Group chair. He's with us

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Speaker 1: this morning. John, Good morning, Good morning. Just wanted to

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Speaker 1: check with you. Are you aware of any new mills

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Speaker 1: or factories that are considering closure because of this problem.

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Speaker 2: Look, I think it's there's a number of businesses that

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Speaker 2: are under enormous strain at the moment, and you know,

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Speaker 2: their ongoing operation is a matter of almost daily consideration.

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Speaker 2: I think the other thing we need to bear in

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Speaker 2: mind with Winstone Pulp is there's a lot of businesses

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Speaker 2: in that area that make their living supporting Winstone Pulp,

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Speaker 2: and so their future at the moment is highly uncertain

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Speaker 2: as well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we're talking about essentially about the potential decimation of

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Speaker 1: entire towns, here you've got two hundred and thirty jobs,

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Speaker 1: but then you look at that that's probably one thousand

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Speaker 1: people in terms of family members, et cetera. You know

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Speaker 1: our Kerney data hei these have a population of two

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Speaker 1: thy three hundred.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolutely devastating for that community, and I think

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Speaker 2: it really shines a light on how vulnerable that a

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Speaker 2: lot of our regional and provincial communities are two things

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Speaker 2: like rapidly escalating wholesale electricity prices that undermine the viability

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Speaker 2: of the businesses that they depend on.

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Speaker 1: This thirty six percent increase this is for the gurn

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Speaker 1: Court on the same time last year for electricity, gas,

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Speaker 1: waste and wastewater services. Is that significant?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolutely significant. To put another sort of way

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Speaker 2: of looking at it, Ryan is for the per we're

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Speaker 2: looking at starting in twenty sixteen. At that time, the

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Speaker 2: combined profits of the four gentailors was two hundred and

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Speaker 2: ninety seven million dollars. This year, the combined profits of

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Speaker 2: the for gent tailors is one billion and eighty five

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Speaker 2: million dollars. So we've seen a massive increase in the

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Speaker 2: amount of profit these companies are making and they're not

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Speaker 2: making any more. Electricity than they were eight years ago, so.

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Speaker 1: We shouldn't have partially privatized them.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think we certainly had an argument that the

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Speaker 2: partial privatization has exacerbated a pre existing problem. The Commerce

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Speaker 2: Commission back in two thousand and nine, so prior to

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Speaker 2: the partial float, found that New Zealanders were already paying

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Speaker 2: higher prices for electricity than they would if we had

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Speaker 2: a competitive market. And to give you a sense of

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Speaker 2: sort of what the scale of that is is sort

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Speaker 2: of between the electricity regulator, the electricity Authority and private

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Speaker 2: investment companies that have sort of looked at this with

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Speaker 2: their modeling tools. Because the estimate is New zeal And

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Speaker 2: consumers including households, are paying between one and two billion

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Speaker 2: dollars a year more than we should be for our electricity.

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Speaker 1: Goodness me, John, thank you very much for that. Of course,

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Speaker 1: there's a task force that is currently looking at options.

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Speaker 1: We'll see how that goes over in Australia. As a

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Speaker 1: report earlier in the show, they are looking at nuclear,

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Speaker 1: you know, because you cannot rely on wind, solar and

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Speaker 1: hydro its intermittence, so you either need coal or gas

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Speaker 1: or nuclear. For more from News Talks B Listen Live

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