Media Release

Peter Gutwein MP
Shadow Treasurer
Shadow Minister for Energy

Tuesday 15th June 2010

Government's Energy Policy Chaos

Every day the Labor-Green Government stalls its announcement on energy adds to the growing concerns that there actually is no energy policy in Tasmania.

It appears that even though the Government has known for months that there are significant problems in the taxpayer-owned energy sector, they are still cobbling together a response.

It is simply astounding that the Labor-Green Government is saying that it didn't know there was a problem until after the election.

FoI documents obtained by the Liberals show that the initial PriceWaterhouseCoopers report into the energy sector raised such significant concerns that a Cabinet sub-committee inquiring into the taxpayer-owned energy companies requested a second report be prepared. That request was made in March last year.

And who was on that Cabinet sub-committee, which was tasked specifically with investigating Tasmania's energy sector? None other than the Premier, David Bartlett, the Treasurer, Michael Aird and the then Energy Minister, David Llewellyn.

It simply beggars belief that in Parliament today, the Treasurer had the audacity to claim that he didn't know there were significant concerns. He has been intimately involved in the process since day one. In fact, he commissioned the second report into the energy sector in March last year. If he didn't know there were problems then, why did he commission the second report?

It's not impossible that the new Energy Minister, Bryan Green, has been ignorant of the problems to date, but it is a bridge too far for the Treasurer and the Premier to claim that they knew nothing.

It is either sloppy or just plain negligent that Tasmanians are still waiting on the Labor-Green Government to outline their energy policy.