GAS
SUPPLY — ESPERANCE
701. Mr P.J. RUNDLE to the Minister for Energy:
I refer to the minister's response to my question
last week about 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) Given that the withdrawal of services was a direct
consequence of decisions by Horizon Power, which falls under the
minister's portfolio responsibility, and precipitated the current
issue, when did the government commence preliminary scoping and investigation
of options to ensure the continued supply of energy to affected customers?
(2) Why is it
only now that Horizon Power has elected to collate an independent list of the
affected gas customers in Esperance?
Mr W.J. JOHNSTON replied:
(1)–(2)
Firstly, Madam Speaker, thank you very much for giving me the call, and I thank
the member for the question, but it is based on a false premise. This has
absolutely nothing to do with the supply of electricity in Esperance. The government of Western Australia has never been
involved in the supply of gas to consumers in Esperance. It has always been done by a private company. The
government provides regulatory oversight to that, but we are not in any
way, shape or form involved in the supply of gas to the people of Esperance.
Therefore, the basis of member's question is 100 per cent wrong.
It
is unfortunate that the private company that provides gas to the people of
Esperance has chosen to withdraw that
service. In fact, I met with its representatives just this week and I said
those very words to them at that time,
as I have said here in the chamber and in the media. It is outrageous, and I said
this to them, that they would make this the problem of the government. We do
not sell gas. The government of Western Australia has not sold gas to any
residential customer since the Liberal Party and the National Party privatised
AlintaGas in the 1990s. Today, no customers are supplied gas by the government
of Western Australia anywhere in Western Australia, other than a small number
of very, very large businesses. In fact, when the Liberal–National
government of Western Australia sold Alinta and took the government out of the
supply of gas to residential customers, it put a moratorium on what was then
Western Power, now Synergy and Horizon, selling gas to consumers, so it is
against the rules that the former government introduced for Horizon to sell gas
to those consumers.
Not only was this problem caused
by a private company, the government of Western Australia cannot solve the problem. I was pleased to meet with
Infrastructure Capital Group on, I think, Tuesday, and we are asking it to
delay its departure so we can execute an alternative proposal, because, let us
make it clear, we do not sell gas to any consumer anywhere in Western Australia.
Therefore, I cannot fix the problem that the private sector has created. This
is what I would have liked to do. ICG says to the member and others that it
cannot sell the gas because it lost the electricity contract with Horizon, but
it lost that contract two years ago. If, two years ago, ICG believed it
could not supply customers in Esperance, it could have given us two years'
notice of the decision.
One of the first documents I signed
as minister was the approval for Horizon to go to a new supplier of electricity
in Esperance, but let us understand that there is a $10 million annual
difference in the cost of energy supplied from the incumbent provider compared
with the new provider—$10 million a year. That is $25 000 per customer that ICG would like us to give to it to keep the
gas supply in Esperance. The member can see why the idea that the government
would let ICG continue to supply Horizon is just ridiculous. I know it
is in ICG's financial interests, but it is not in the financial
interests of the people of Western Australia and
therefore I will not contemplate that. As I said, I met with ICG on Tuesday and
it was a very productive meeting. We
are going away to have a look at a few issues and it will come back and talk to
me about a few issues, but let me make it 100 per cent clear: the
presentation that the member has made of this problem is completely and utterly incorrect. The government of Western Australia
does not sell gas to any residential customer anywhere in the state,
because the Liberal–National government stopped it.