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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 572 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 21 September 2022 by Mr P.J. Rundle

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

WESTERN POWER — SUPPLY ALLOCATION

572. Mr P.J. RUNDLE to the Minister for Energy:

I have a supplementary question.

Several members interjected.

The SPEAKER: Order, please!

Several members interjected.

The SPEAKER: Ministers!

Mr P.J. RUNDLE: How is it fair that households in my electorate are expected to shut down air conditioners and heaters to avoid tripping the circuit breaker under these rules because the network is not up to twenty-first century requirements?

Mr W.J. JOHNSTON replied:

This is the problem when a member reads out another question without understanding the first answer. I never said that there is a choice in this and nobody ever said that the capacity cannot be increased. I said that it would cost a very large amount of money for those residents to increase their capacity, and I imagine that they do not want to pay for that. The point I keep making is that Byford residents in the member for Darling Range's electorate are probably paying $20 000 for their 62-amp connection. They do not get it for free; they pay for it, but it is in the price of the land when they buy it. The problem is that 50 years ago when whoever was there at the time paid for the connection, they paid for only a 32-amp connection. They can upgrade it now if they want to pay for it, in exactly the same way as every single member in this chamber paid for their own connection without a subsidy. The problem is that it is really expensive and people do not want to pay for the upgrade. I understand that, but let us get away from the idea that this is about the quality of the network, which it is not, or that it is about some secular argument between country and city, because it is not about that either.