350 Aotearoa campaigner Adam Currie says “Households are struggling and high electricity prices are destroying jobs. In the midst of an energy crisis, it is mind-boggling that Contact thinks now is the time to be delivering mega payouts to shareholders. New data out this week shows in 2023 Contact was the 17th biggest emitter in the country - spewing out more climate pollution than any other Gentailer. We don’t need dirty fossil fuels to power our energy system. Contact should be investing every last dollar into new renewable generation - not in large payouts for shareholders. While we’ve begun to see an increase in investment by Contact, this large payout to shareholders shows they can go far further.”

“It is wrong that consumers, including low-income households, are providing a windfall to energy company shareholders. 400,000 New Zealanders are living in energy hardship right now. A decade of large payouts to shareholders has starved our electricity network of new renewable generating capacity, hiking prices on households in the midst of a cost of living crisis, and keeping coal and gas-powered generating assets on life support. Instead of embracing the benefits of renewable technologies, with lower carbon emissions, lower bills for households and more energy freedom, the gentailers have caused this crisis by scrambling to maintain the status quo because it protects their bottom line - paying over a billion dollars in dividends to shareholders over the past decade. Privatisation has been a disaster for consumers, for workers and the climate. We will not see an end to this until the Government sets the right levers and uses its power as a majority shareholder in the electricity generation market. That means a taskforce to break down barriers, it means regulated buy back rates, it means xx, and it means breaking up the gentailer cartel,” says Currie.

“Last week, Government Minister Shane Jones called the Gentailers a cartel ‘with enormous market power to exploit situations such as the present one and that market power is exercised at the pursuit of profits, which is what these companies are set up to do.’ In this the Minister is correct - and now it’s time for the government to put their money where their mouth is.”

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