Between the lines: Consumers must not be left in the dark

It was with high-minded intent that Energy Minister Pete Hodgson set out with an energy policy geared towards maintaining security of electricity supply, energy efficiency and better service and prices for consumers.

In pursuit of those goals, he set up an inquiry under the chairmanship of former Labour Finance Minister David Caygill that embarked on a detailed examination of the industry.

The ensuing report, its conclusions and the reasons for them, were largely impenetrable to lay people, not just because of the industry's undoubted complexities, but also because the report made little effort to put them into an everyday context.

For the non-initiates, the value of recommendations that were largely adopted by the Government must be taken as an act of faith.

But if there is one area against which the Hodgson/Caygill reform process will be measured, it will be in what happens to consumers.

In the past decade, a story of rising prices and increasingly poor service has been the springboard for an incoming Government to take an over-arching view of the industry.

In the short-term, the inquiry and its recommendations may not make much direct difference. While it has been a spur to the industry to mend its ways, the legislation the inquiry has spawned will not be passed for some months.

One feature that may make a difference is that the confusing array of three industry governance bodies will be combined into one, with a large non-industry participation on its board.

An industry governance establishment project, chaired as it happens by Mr Caygill, has already noted that the timetable is tight to complete the integration if regulation is to be avoided.

For consumers, the importance of the new board is that it will take over the functions of Maria (Metering And Reconciliation Information Agreement), a governance body that has responsibility for disciplining industry members who fail to meet their obligations when switching customers from one power supplier to another.

Maria's governance board chairman, Richard Rowley, a former lawyer and now a business consultant, says things are still far from satisfactory.

He can't bring himself to accept that the gaming that was a key part in customer switching problems at the outset of the market has gone away. But he knows significant efforts are being made to improve systems that in the absence of malign intent still struggled to cope, given the overnight creation of the competitive electricity market.

Systems failures are no small concern. TransAlta, the retailer everybody loves to hate, has had serious problems getting its call centres to work, in part caused by the not inexpensive accounting software package supporting them.

At this time, Maria has 42 complaints against electricity companies pending and recently imposed its first fine of $6000 plus costs against Mighty River Power.

Even though the fine sounds like a slap with a wet bus ticket, Mighty River is appealing, considering its cooperation in admitting the offence and inadvertent nature to be mitigating factors.

Given the benign circumstances behind Mighty River's transgression, the message is that other offenders could face much worse, Mr Rowley suggests.

But one of the ironies of the present arrangement is that the fines imposed are distributed around the players at the end of the year. In theory, if everybody is uniformly bad, there would be nothing to worry about.

That is not good enough for Mr Rowley, who would like the money to go to charity. And it should not be good enough for consumers, who will judge these reforms on their success in disciplining errant companies.