Blue Mountains MP Trish Doyle has slammed the passage of legislation in the Upper House that allows the sale of publicly-owned assets as a betrayal of residents in the Blue Mountains.
"When power in NSW is privatised, what guarantees exist -especially for people in my electorate, where bushfire risk is already substantial -that the operators will do everything possible to manage the environmental impact of the poles and wires network?
"The lesson from south of the border is that a lack of network maintenance by private owners of the electricity grid was a direct contributor to the 2009 Victorian bushfire disaster."
Ms Doyle said the Baird Government "will gloat about diverting the proceeds of the sale to pork barrel their blue-ribbon North Shore heartland with a second harbour crossing. In the meantime, people in our community will be left with poorly maintained trains, inadequate funding for local schools and hospitals, and the electricity price rises that will come with privately owned poles and wires."
During Parliamentary debate on the poles and wires sale, Trish Doyle outlined the impact of privatisation on prices and service quality.
"Prices will increase and services will deteriorate. The precedent for this exists in Victoria, where prices increased by 60 per cent to 70 per cent after its power was privatised. While prices rose dramatically, reliability in Victoria crashed, with a 32 per cent increase in blackouts after privatisation."
But NSW energy minister Anthony Roberts rejected the bushfire risk claim, saying the regulation of network businesses, including bushfire risk management, is not affected by ownership.
"Electricity networks are required to prepare safety management systems that include management of bushfire risk relating to the electricity lines and other assets in the network.
"It doesn't matter whether the network is publicly or privately owned. They must meet these requirements.
"The government's electricity network legislation has strengthened these arrangements by transferring safety and technical regulation to IPART with a range of changes to support this.
"The compliance and enforcement powers available to IPART have been enhanced, and these include enforcement by the tribunal of bushfire risk management requirements.
"The safety and technical obligations including the management of bushfire risk doesn't change, they are still required to do all the same things they did before they were leased."
The first lease of NSW's energy networks is expected to be completed by year's end with treasuer Gladys Berejiklian saying bidders had until July 14 to show interest in the long-term lease of Transgrid. A partial lease of Endeavour Energy and Ausgrid will follow.