Wimmera residents to suffer in power bill rise

From January 1, Wimmera residents could see increases of up to 11.4 per cent for electricity and nine per cent for gas, depending on their provider.

Horsham’s Christian Emergency Food Centre client assessment manager Bev Miatke said the service had already seen an influx of residents unable to pay power bills this year.

She said she was frightened to think what would happen when household power prices increased.

“It’ll be devastating,” she said. “We’re still finding people are struggling post winter bills.

“There’s still a lot of worry about that and now they’re saying it’ll go up even more.”

Mrs Miatke said the organisation could only help with a small fraction of bills and mostly assisted by advocating to power companies on behalf of clients. 

She said the centre provided advice on how to claim hardship from power companies and assisted by providing food so residents could focus their finances on bills. Mrs Miatke said people simply could not afford to pay $300 more a year. 

“I just don’t know how people will cope, me personally too,” she said.

“Bills are already huge and it’s a real worry that they’re going up even more.”

Mrs Miatke said the centre had noticed an increase in new clients seeking assistance. 

“It’s quite obvious we’re getting lots of new clients. I imagine that will just keep going,” she said. “It’s scary.”

Mrs Miatke said the centre was lucky to be well supported by community donations.

Small businesses are expected to absorb rises of between eight and 17 per cent on electricity. 

Dooen Engineering Services’ Patrick Ellis said the increase would have to be passed on to customers. 

He said even businesses that avoided the direct financial hit through passing the costs on would suffer. 

“The impact for us is against imported goods,” he said. “They won’t have that 17 per cent increase. The costs won’t increase because the expenses won’t.”

Mr Ellis said electricity accounted for about one per cent of the company’s expenses so the affect would not be huge, but any increase hampered competitiveness with imported goods.