Perhaps there will be some positives from Tiwai

WHILE it is sad for the people of Southland to finally lose the Tiwai Point aluminum smelter, it has a large benefit for the rest of the country in that we will not have to worry about security of our electricity supply for many years to come.

Transpower has suggested that it will cost in the order of $600 million to shift the electricity to where it is required in the North Island, and that a new Cook Strait cable will be required to facilitate this.

Can I assume that those costs will be borne by the recipients, and not longsuffering folk who live close to the source of the generating capacity and have much higher electricity accounts due to the colder weather down here in the winter months?

As we have long since moved to a ‘‘user pays’’ model in this country, it is about time this was reflected in our power accounts.

John Grant

Alexandra

YOUR ‘‘recent’’ history in brief of the Tiwai smelter (ODT, 10.7.20) nevertheless started with the 1960s but left out a most significant event — the unilateral increasing of the electricity charges by the Muldoon government in the late 1970s.

The original agreement with

Comalco was for 99 years at 2c (or was it 0.2c?) per unit. It seems the Kiwi way is to wait until a project is past the point of no return and then say ‘‘What contract? We say what goes now.’’

That is why we are not a rich, industrialised country. Noone is stupid enough to trust us. If we now return to the original contracted prices, I am sure the smelter will thrive .

Allan Golden

Pine Hill

TRANSPOWER claims it is too expensive to distribute Tiwai’s power supply north (ODT, 10.7.20). Here’s a novel idea: distribute that power to all the businesses in Southland at the same nickelanddime rate Rio Tinto screwed us for.

That will probably help support more than the 1000 jobs that have constantly been used to blackmail the Government for cheap electricity.