By Andrew Bolt ~
Between 2008 and 2014, electricity transmission and distribution costs increased by some $400 per household in Queensland and New South Wales, where the poles and wires are government-owned, but by around $250 per household in the privatised systems of Victoria and South Australia.
The result, a study for Uniting Care recently found, is that even in rural Victoria, where lower population density causes higher costs, electricity prices are 30 per cent below those in Brisbane. The gap between Melbourne on the one hand and Brisbane and Sydney on the other is greater yet. And while prices are lower in the privately owned systems, network reliability is higher.
The causes of those differences are no mystery: the government-owned poles and wires companies are inefficient…
But don’t expect that to sway Labor from its anti-privatisation crusade, as it puts the interests of public sector unions above those of consumers.
Why the unions want the poles and wires businesses to remain government-owned is readily understood… Queensland and NSW families … each pay for … [union] featherbedding through a hidden tax of $70 to $120 a year, to which must be added the higher prices consumers bear every time they buy electricity-intensive goods and services…
Rod Sims, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, has said that had the poles and wires “been owned by the private sector, we’d probably have lower electricity prices than we do now”.
Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.
Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.
Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
