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.