Yesterday saw more power outages, with over six thousand homes across the Perth metro and regional areas left without power on an over 40-degree day.
WA Liberal Leader and Shadow Minister for Energy, Dr David Honey MLA, said there is no excuse for these new outages, as unsurprising as they are.
“This is simply a case of WA Labor’s neglect of other issues in the State while they struggle to deal with their last-minute COVID preparation failures.
“I’m sure if Energy Minister Bill Johnston was affected by these outages, he would want it fixed quickly. We have State-wide outages for the second time in under a month.
“Gingin has been left without power for two days in some cases, Bunbury experienced over 4,000 outages yesterday, with some homes yet to have power restored.
“I can only imagine how much worse these outages will be once our workforce is isolating from home as COVID inevitably begins spreading throughout our State.
“WA Labor as we all know has had ample time to fix these kinks in the system, but they have done nothing in five years other than strip hundreds of millions of dollars from Western Power,” said Dr Honey.
For extended interruptions, those lasting more than 12 hours, reached 45,000 hours in the 2016-17 period, the year before WA Labor were elected. In 2019-20, nearly three years into the WA Labor Government, interruptions were at 98,159 hours and last year were only slightly lower at 69,995 hours.
Dr Honey said Minister Johnston’s promised power outage inquiry is yet to commence and people inside Western Power already know what the problems are and how to fix them. The Minister simply needs to authorise them to do this.
“The obvious thing to do is to get the outages under control first to prevent more Western Australians from suffering. Mobile generating units should be installed in known problem areas and used to overcome any temporary power outage clusters.
“This inquiry’s announcement is a diversion for the Minister’s failures. It’s a sad attempt to point fingers away from the issues that have developed under his watch. The failures of his Government are again affecting families and small businesses,” said Dr Honey.
