Leader of the WA Liberals and Shadow Minister for Energy, Dr David Honey MLA, has called on Energy Minister Bill Johnston to automatically compensate all families who were affected by the 3-day Christmas power outages.
“The Minister for Energy needs to automatically compensate all families who were affected by the 3-day Christmas power outages.
“These families should not be at a personal loss simply because Western Power has not been able to guarantee them a stable electricity supply.
“It should not be up to the customer to claim these payments. Western Power knows exactly which households were affected and should automatically compensate them accordingly.
Mr Honey was also concerned about the Minister’s reasoning for the prolonged outages.
“For the Minister for Energy to also say that that the weather over Christmas was unusually hot and that was the cause of these outages is just more dithering from another failed Labor Minister.
Whilst having days hotter than 40C around Christmas may be unusual, it is certainly not unheard of for Perth or Western Australia.
“The system is designed to cope with WA’s high summer temperatures, but unfortunately what’s become abundantly clear is that under Labor it has not been properly maintained.
“Wester Power has given the State Government over $523 million in financial dividends over the past 2 years. It is a highly profitable government utility and as with all government utilities, Western Power must adequately fund its network to ensure that all customers have a stable power network, especially through the midst of summer.
“The reality is that the engineers, technicians and the lines-people in Western Power could tell the Minister today what the problems with the system are, just as they have told me. Then the Minister could direct Western Power to go and invest the money required to fix the problems.
“This must happen as a matter of urgency.” said Dr Honey.
