A real fair go needed

CHALK it up to another instance of our corporates not setting the best of examples.

There is little doubt that Victorians are feeling cost of living pressures.

Costs are going up while our ability to meet them is plateauing.

These cost pressures are felt even more keenly in regional cities like ours where wages aren’t as high and (as we reported yesterday) some modern necessities like petrol are more expensive.

In the middle of a seemingly endless winter we tend to flick on the heater with a bit of anxiety of what we might get slugged with in the post.

You might hope good corporate citizens like power companies would be alive to this reality and be sensitive to doing the right thing by their customers.

(We are not suggesting they run at a loss — just that they not engage in practices to dupe and fleece the public.)

And yet it seems nothing short of the political equivalent of being dragged into the principal’s office — a publicly announced meeting with the PM — is what it takes to bring about some modicum of change and fairness in their dealings.

As a warning shot and public shaming exercise, Mr Turnbull’s stunt was a success.

It may only have happened because the government fears an irritated electorate with stagnated wages and rising costs may be amenable to Labor’s ongoing campaign on inequality.

It is nevertheless heartening to see a conservative government willing to hold our titans of commerce to some small account in the public’s interest.

What did our leaders extract from the ‘Power Companies Behaving Badly’?

The companies say they will now tell their customers when their discount periods have ended before jacking them up to the standard rate. That seems like the right thing to do.

But it is a small matter of etiquette compared to the real fight the PM would have to undertake to give us any real comfort on our power costs.