Federation must act on power club idea

By Glenys Christian

The debate is never ending on how Federated Farmers can really help its members.

Facts and figures are often trotted out about the savings achieved through its leaders' success in fighting obscure pieces of legislation of which most farmers have never heard.

Recent attempts to put the dollars and cents value of such victories in terms of a typical New Zealand farm have not proved as much an incentive for non-members to join up promptly as the federation would like.

But now the federation's vice-president, Alistair Polson, is putting up an idea which would have immediate appeal to many people in the rural community.

He would like the federation to set up a power club.

No, it would not be the rural answer to the Business Roundtable which has so often been talked about but never seems to get any closer.

This power club would be a group of electricity users who could combine and call tenders for supply.

Farmers, especially dairy farmers, who must milk cows twice a day for most of the year, are large electricity consumers.

They have been hit by higher charges already through having to update meters. As the costs have grown, they have looked ever more seriously at how they could bring their influence to bear.

In the old days, a couple of farmers were always on the local power board, so they had no difficulty in getting across their views on the issues that affected rural people.

Rural power users' problems are often ones which their urban counterparts would never dream of tolerating - intermittent supply, outages and often lengthy delays before matters are put right.

One of farmers' great concerns about electricity reform was that such inequities would continue, and the property at the very end of a gravel road would be regarded as such an unattractive option that no power supplier would want to service it.

But with their own power club, farmers could forge a commercial arrangement which would prove the value or otherwise of electricity industry reforms once and for all.

In some instances, larger rural power users have already negotiated better deals than they had previously been able to obtain.

But the whole point of a power club would be that those who lack size and strength could gain it simply through membership of the federation.

Mr Polson says the idea is being very seriously considered.

An organisation set up under the federation's umbrella would receive members' power bills. It would work out the supply required to fill the collective demand and on that basis call for tenders at better prices than those being paid.

He is very hopeful that the scheme can be pulled together, but says in the next breath that time is needed to make electricity reforms work.

In this case, time is probably not on the federation's side.

If it does not wrap up a power club deal in fairly rapid order, another player may well step in.

Surely other parties out there must be waiting to take advantage of a new, free-market opportunity.

And if that happens the federation could not lose just the very sound idea of a power club.

It could lose its power base.

* Glenys Christian can be contacted by email at glenysfarm@xtrea.co.nz