MPs brush off petition calling for electricity industry reforms

Sunday, 16 April 2023

Flick Electric’s call for “a revolt” has failed to spur a select committee into action.

A petition calling for an overhaul of the electricity industry has been brushed off by a select committee.

Flick Electric, which is 95% owned by Z Energy, gathered 11,000 signatures for a petition it initiated in 2021, when it called for people to “revolt to reform New Zealand's broken electricity market”.

Its petition called for majority state-owned gentailers Meridian, Genesis and Mercury to be broken up into retail and generation arms, mirroring the way Telecom was split into the companies now known as Spark and Chorus in 2011.

A report from Parliament’s Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee acknowledged Flick’s concerns about competition and innovation in the electricity market and said there should be “robust competition in the sector to get better prices and benefits for consumers”.

* Has Labour been sitting on the solution to fix the power market all along?

* National taking fresh look at power market as Flick asks public to 'revolt'

* Energy Minister Megan Woods not ready to give power firms the 'Telecom' treatment

But it made no comment about the desirability of any reforms.

Instead, it pointed to advice it received from the Electricity Authority.

The Electricity Authority said that some recent pricing in the wholesale electricity market could not be explained by market and environmental factors, and said it was “currently investigating these discrepancies”.

But the regulator said that in its view, the available evidence to date did not support Flick’s case that there was a persistent and structural abuse of market power in the industry.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment advised the committee that it did “not currently consider separation of gentailers a priority for reform”, but it said that could be reconsidered if competition in the electricity industry didn’t improve.

Polling of Stuff readers has consistently suggested a strong consensus that the electricity market has not been structured correctly.

A report by the Government-founded Consumer Advocacy Council in March found that slightly under half of households trusted electricity companies to do the right thing by their customers.