Contact critical of Opposition’s ‘crazy’ power plans

IF LABOUR and the Greens imposed their proposed power policy, Contact Energy would be forced into a complete restructure, chief executive Dennis Barnes says.

After the company’s annual meeting in Christchurch yesterday, Barnes said the policy would require a structural change for Contact’s business and the elec- tricity industry. It would ‘‘change the face of Contact from a risk manager and a retailer to a business which has got the Government as its customer’’.

‘‘It’s likely that a lot of the people we have working in the risk aspects of our business wouldn’t be needed any more. I believe that innovation would stop and the Government would have to fund that.

‘‘The biggest change is that the Government then becomes responsible for security of supply development of the industry rather than the market; that’s a whole different dynamic.’’

Barnes indicated that power price increases in the past couple of years had not come from generators and retailers such as Contact Energy. ‘‘A lot of the prices increases that you experience as a whole are transmission and distribution and charges that the generators and the retailers are not responsible for.’’

At the meeting, a shareholder asked how likely it was that the Labour and the Greens might impose what Barnes described as a ‘‘crazy plan’’.

Chairman Grant King said the company had sought to participate in the power policy discussion through expert commentary. ‘‘We know a lot about energy, not a lot about politics.’’