COMMENT:

There's a very good chance your power bill’s going to go up.

The Government's announced an electricity industry shakeup today which they’re saying is going to bring down power prices.

But that’s not going to happen for a lot of New Zealanders. In fact, the opposite is more likely. There's a bunch of reasons for that.

One is the Government is going to remove low-cost electricity.

So right now if you don’t use a lot of electricity, maybe because you have a gas heater or an insulated house, or you live in a smaller place, there’s a good chance you’re paying these lower prices.

As many as 60 per cent of households could be paying these prices. They’re going to go up.

Because apparently these households are subsidising those with bigger families bigger houses or less insulation.

So if you are one of these, brace yourself to pay more.

The second reason is you’re not going to be able to screw a better deal out of your power company.

So at the moment, you can go to another power company get better you come back to your retailer and say 'match it' and they can - and you can pay less.

That's called a ‘win back’ and now it's gone - it won’t be allowed.

The reason is that smaller power companies say it’s unfair, the big guys keep winning back the customers and so fewer customers switch over.

The third reason is that prompt payment discounts are gone.

Sorry, they’re not allowed to do this anymore.

The Government argues it was never a discount anyway and you were only paying for the electricity you were actually using.

The higher price, the discountless price actually contains a late penalty fee.

Well, do you think this is going to make a difference?

Power companies will still charge late penalty fees, there's nothing stopping them doing that.

So I don’t think this is going to help much in bring your bill down.

Quite frankly, this is regulating for regulation’s sake.

If you’ve already made an effort to bring down your power bill, maybe you’ve insulated, or shopped around, this is not going to help you, it’s maybe going to make it worse.

If you haven’t even tried to get the best price, well it’s your lucky day because we’re regulating now for laziness, disengagement and apathy.