Cost of power is total rip-off

YOUR story “Electricity Price Shock” (TC, 4/10) about the excessive increases in electricity prices for the residents in Shiel St is being repeated in streets all around the Darling Downs and the state.

Electricity prices are out of control. Under this government the tariff 11 charge has increased 29% but the real increase is the cost of connection - the service fee has increased 258%. The one thing that helps consumers have some control over the electricity tax, installation of solar panels, is being actively discouraged by the State Government.

The profits for 2013-14 of the government-owned transmission and distribution network companies, Ergon, Energex and Powerlink, have just been released: a very handsome $1.1 billion ripped from the electricity consumers of Queensland.

Minister Mark McArdle is quoted in your article as saying $662 million goes towards ensuring equitable electricity prices throughout the state, but that still leaves the government almost half a billion dollars to go into consolidated revenue. The minister is on the record as saying the money goes to pay for doctors, nurses and police and other items of government expenditure. So electricity is just a revenue-raising exercise for the government. Let’s be honest about it and refer to it as an electricity tax.

But the story doesn’t end there. The government is not interested in reducing the profits of these productive assets anytime soon because it wants to lease them to private enterprise. I cannot see private companies wanting to reduce their profits to help out electricity consumers. The pain for the people in Sheil St and all other electricity consumers in this state is likely to continue unless the government is tough enough to cut the electricity tax and put solar panels back on the agenda as part of the solution.

MARK TRANTER, Hodgson Vale