Chch 'treated badly’ on fuel

Press, 29 June 1983, Page 18

Chch 'treated badly’ on fuel

Christchurch has been treated badly in its search for clean fuels, according to the secretary of the New Zealand Clean Air Society, Mr P. V. Neary. Mr Neary was commenting on a statement by the Minister of Energy, Mr Birch, last week that if Christchurch was given a subsidy for domestic electricity during the winter, other communities would seek it. Mr Neary said the Minister did not rebut the claim that the South Island had a natural right to electric power at a lower price than the North Island, but implied that it was not politically possible. “It is hard to understand why the Government has been able to subsidise the sale of domestic coal supplies to Christchurch for many years without others complaining,” Mr Neary said. He claimed Christchurch had been treated badly in its search for clean fuels,

even though it had tried to help itself. In spite of the moral responsibilities that the Government accepted when it passed the Clean Air Act in 1972, it continued to do nothing, after a decade of promises, he said. Government intervention 60 years ago stopped Christchurch proceeding with its own hydro-electricity scheme, although Dunedin was allowed its own scheme and now had substantial facilities for reducing its peak electricity load. The Christchurch Gas Company had shown enterprise in its efforts to persuade the Government to arrange for an early supply of natural gas, but seven years later this important public utility had been scrapped, Mr Neary said. “If Wellington, New Plymouth, and other North Island centres are given the advantages of cheap energy from natural gas, are we not entitled to some cut in our own indigenous South Island electricity?” he said.