Regional gas prices
Ms STALEY (Ripon) (19:08): (6380) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and the action I seek is that she fix the clear inequity for regional energy users caused by the gas monopoly in western Victoria. The minister is looking curious, and so I will explain for the benefit of the house what this is. There is a gas pipe from Carisbrook to Horsham, and it only has one gas provider, which has the whole capacity on that pipe. What that means is that if you live west of Carisbrook, you cannot avail yourself of competition in the gas or electricity retail markets. While you can have a variety of electricity providers, you are not able to access any of those bundled deals with gas because there is only one gas provider. And even if you go to get a bundled gas deal with that gas provider, they say, ‘No, no, you can’t do that in western Victoria’, because they know they have got no competition. I note the member for Lowan is also in the chamber. We have both raised this repeatedly with the minister for energy, and we have not had any satisfaction as to why those of us who live in western Victoria are not able to access lower, bundled energy packages. It is because this is a monopoly.
The minister has previously in correspondence to me blamed this on the privatisation by the Kennett government in the 1990s. However, I would just point out to the minister that what we are seeking are the very benefits of competition that every other Victorian is able to access. The fact is that this government has allowed a monopoly situation to continue in western Victoria, which means that western Victorian energy users pay much higher energy prices than those anywhere else. There has to be a fix for this. The minister has to stop hiding behind rhetoric that is really very tired or in some cases, when she is not talking about that, is incorrect. So we just need a fix, and that is what I am asking for today.