Hydro Tasmania has used its appearance at a Parliamentary energy inquiry to hit back at its detractors.
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Hydro chief executive Steve Davy returned serve on Monday after the government-owned business was criticised in a recent hearing by industrial users and the Tasmanian Gas Pipeline.
Mr Davy told the Public Accounts Committee that Bell Bay Aliminium general manager Ray Mostogl’s evidence the state’s energy businesses had been ineffective in recent years was “odd”.
He said Hydro twice assisted BBA in recent years, by renegotiating a contract in 2012, and by exempting the company from the Renewable Energy Target last year.
“Despite all the support from state owned energy businesses, aluminium businesses in Australia struggle,” Mr Davy said.
That is caused by international markets, not about a lack of understanding of, or support for, these businesses.”
Mr Davy also questioned Mr Mostogl’s evidence that he had only found out about a plan to decommission the Tamar Valley Power Station’s combined cycle unit in the newspaper.
He said the company had ample opportunities to discuss the plan with Hydro following Energy Minister Matthew Groom announcing the government would explore the unit’s dismantling and sale during government business enterprise scrutiny in December 2014.
Hydro was also scathing about TGP’s evidence that a failure for the parties to agree on an extension to the existing gas contract would increase prices for Tasmanian customers, saying they were designed only to strengthen TGP’s bargaining position.
Hydro’s contract with TGP expires at the end of 2017.
Mr Davy said TGP’s was the sort of behaviour the consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, was seeking to prevent, and said it was Hydro’s responsibility to resist such negotiating tactics in the state’s long-term interest.
He urged the committee to question the merits of most assertions made by TGP.
Meanwhile, Mr Groom and Treasurer Peter Gutwein met with the committee on Monday afternoon after withdrawing from giving evidence to the inquiry on August 5 following legal advice from the Solicitor General.
PAC chairman Ivan Dean said the government wanted to provide evidence “sooner rather than later” and a proposed hearing date had been tentatively put in place.