Media Release

Peter Gutwein MP
Shadow Minister for Energy

Tuesday 11th January 2011

Power disconnections skyrocket – cost of living crisis looms

New data from the Economic Regulator shows an explosion in the number of people being disconnected for not paying their power bills in 2009-10.

The Liberals believe that the Government should be doing more to reduce the cost of living. Unfortunately, the massive rise in disconnections shows that under the Labor-Green Government we are on the verge of a cost of living crisis in Tasmania.

The number of disconnections is only going to increase, because Labor and the Greens broke their promise to deliver lower power prices, even voting against the Liberals’ legislation to cap the price of power. As a result, power prices will increase by a massive 17.3 per cent in 2010-11, and who knows how many families will have their power cut off because they simply can’t afford it?

1,396 residential customers and 66 business customers were disconnected because they could not afford to pay in 2009-10.

That’s a massive 38 per cent increase in residential disconnections and a 154 per cent increase in business disconnections between 2008-09 and 2009-10.

218 customers had their power disconnected more than once over the past two years because they couldn’t afford it.

What’s even more disturbing is that about 550 disconnections (about 39 per cent of all disconnections) were for electricity concession customers.

An increasing number of Tasmanians simply cannot afford to keep the lights on and as we now know, even receiving the electricity concession is not enough to save people from spiralling prices.

This crisis is only going to get worse and the Labor-Green Government must immediately release their cost of living strategy.