Power Supply

Jun 06 - Press, The; Christchurch, New Zealand

The deregulation of the electricity industry in New Zealand by former National Minister of Energy Max Bradford has so far proved to be a dismal failure.

Certainly the latest admission by Transpower, the national grid operator, that, due to infrastructure degradation, it no longer has the capacity to guarantee uninterrupted power supply and that, as a result, it may have to introduce power cuts particularly to the upper half of the South Island, merely reinforces the magnitude of that failure.

For, despite what New Zealand electricity consumers have been led to believe -- that the so-called "free market" possesses a wisdom far superior to that of humans, a wisdom which is meant to benefit rather than disadvantage -- the fact remains that it is an ideology that is still only as good as the decisions made and the paths chosen by fallible, if sometimes bungling, individuals seemingly overawed by its sacred status.

BRIAN HARTLEY Waltham, June 1