ESPERANCE GAS
DISTRIBUTION COMPANY
622. Mr P.J. RUNDLE to the Minister for Energy:
I
refer to the withdrawal of services to customers of the reticulated gas system
in Esperance and the lack of appropriate communication from the
government to the impacted families and businesses.
(1) When will the
minister finally update the 400 affected customers on the plan to manage this
transition, and what is happening regarding their appliances?
(2) When will the
minister inform the hospital, other critical services and local businesses that
are affected about the next steps so that they can clearly plan for the future?
Mr W.J. JOHNSTON
replied:
(1)–(2) I
thank the member very much for his question. I would first like to point out
that the government of Western Australia has no customers of gas in Esperance.
In fact, the government of Western Australia does
not sell gas to any residential customer anywhere in Western Australia. When
the member talks about the affected
customers, I make it clear that all the customers affected by this decision are
customers of the Esperance Gas Distribution Company, which is a subsidiary
of the Infrastructure Capital Group, which made the disappointing decision to
walk away from its customers in Esperance. I am very disappointed that it made that decision to abandon the people
of Esperance. I have checked out whether there is any legal way that we can
hold the private company that provides this service to account for its decision
to abandon its 400 customers in Esperance. Unfortunately, it was never
contemplated by the laws of Western Australia that a gas distribution
company would abandon customers, so we have absolutely no control over what ICG is doing. I understand that one of the
investors in ICG and in the Esperance Gas Distribution Company is, in fact, the
Anglican Church here in Western Australia. I urge those investors to look at
their conscience in the way they are treating these customers in
Esperance.
We
were advised by the Esperance distribution company only on 30 September that it
had made the decision to walk away
from its customers in Esperance. We are very disappointed that it made that
decision. We have no legal authority to stop it from doing that. We are
very disappointed that it made that decision to abandon its customers in
Esperance. We are particularly very disappointed that it gave the people of
Esperance such short notice.
I think there are roughly 370
residential customers, of which 167 are Department of Housing houses. There are about 30 commercial customers. We are
engaging with the company to see whether it can be more respectful to
its customers, who have been loyally paying their bills to that company for a long
period. It is extremely disappointing that they have walked away from the
people of Esperance, the member's constituents. As I have explained,
the government has no capacity to control that decision. We are looking at alternatives. We are looking at what options
are available to the residential customers. A range of options are
available, but we are not in a position to do anything today because Esperance
power advised us only on 30 September that it would walk away. So, it has been
fewer than three weeks since we were advised by this private company that it
was going to abandon the member's constituents. We are looking at what
options are available for us to step in.
Let me make it clear that there is no
option for us to start selling gas to residential customers in Esperance
because they would be the only people that we would be selling gas to in the
whole of Western Australia. As the member knows, there is a moratorium on
Synergy and Horizon Power selling gas to residential customers. That was part
of the privatisation of Alinta, which was done by a former Liberal–National
government. In the end, we think there are about four or five business
customers who cannot do without gas. We are trying to see whether there is some
way we can continue to provide gas to those customers. At this stage, I cannot
give that assurance because we have to deal with this incredibly disappointing
behaviour by this private company.
We are looking at what options are
available to residential customers. One option might be the conversion to
electric supply. Obviously, that would mean that we would have to replace the
appliances that are used by those customers.
Potentially, it would cost a few million dollars to do that. We would certainly
be asking the Infrastructure Capital Group, which has been making a lot
of money from the residents of Esperance over a long period, to make a contribution.
I hope that the member would join with me in that request to ICG to pay for
that change, if that is the pathway we follow.
I
want to make a final point before I sit down and take the member's
supplementary question. The saving to the taxpayers of Western Australia from
the new option, which is a more renewable option than the current provision of
electricity for Horizon, is $10 million a year. The member should think about
that. ICG has been taking an extra $10 million a year from the people of Western
Australia for its operations in Esperance. The idea that it cannot afford to
help its loyal customers that it is abandoning in such a brutal fashion is
wrong. I expect ICG to step up to the plate and fund this because the taxpayers
of Western Australia should not have to fill the gap left by a private
company.