Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

My election promise, not only at the 2010 election but also at the 2008 election, was to back an emissions trading scheme. Point 4 is a clear promise from the New South Wales Liberals and Nationals plan for affordable and sustainable electricity to introduce a dividend policy. They themselves last week broke this promise by nearly $300 million. The New South Wales Liberals and Nationals promised to 'introduce a dividend policy that stops government treating electricity companies as cash cows', but the reality is that households and small businesses are paying dearly for ballooning power profits. You could say that they are paying for a bad dividend policy based on a lie.

It is no wonder that landholders affected by a new high-voltage transmission line promised in the electorate of Lyne question whether the project is designed to meet power demand or to make money. TransGrid is one of the four state-owned power monopolies that will pay much higher dividends next year than it has in the past, and its transmission line proposal has been met with extreme distrust by landholders of all political variations.

IPART has made it clear that wholesale electricity generation costs have not increased over the past five years. Let us be very clear about that: wholesale prices in New South Wales over the last decade have hardly moved. Added to that, demand in New South Wales over the last two years has fallen. Those who can think logically can add all that together—wholesale prices are holding, demand is falling and retail is going through the roof with 70 per cent increases over the last five years.

This is the greatest market failure in Australia today, and it needs to be corrected by state governments, which are currently skimming the super profits, setting their own rates of return and not dealing with appeals to rates of returns such as those that occurred in New South Wales, where they gave themselves a 10 per cent return over the last five years.

See this speech in context