The trust is having its regular five-yearly ownership review and has received 200 submissions from Hawke’s Bay consumers connected to lines from Unison Group.
All of those submissions are available to be read on the Hawke’s Bay Power Consumers’ Trust (HBPCT) website.
The submissions include the email addresses of the submitters and in many cases residential addresses, mobile and landline numbers.
That has disappointed and surprised Brian Anderson from lobby group Free the Funds, which is seeking to challenge the established ownership model, which sees Unison shares held in a trust and Hawke’s Bay’s 61,000 connected consumers paid an annual dividend of $240.
“The information to be supplied with a submission is one thing and reasonable, in order to verify that it is genuinely from a consumer,” Anderson said.
“The submissions are rightly made available publicly, but it is highly questionable that address details, phone numbers and email address should also be published.
“That is a serious question of the privacy of all of that personal information.
“It would be normal to redact all that information before making the submissions public.”
However, HBPCT chairwoman Diana Kirton says it is the proven method of publishing submissions.
“The trust makes it clear regarding the information that it has to be supplied as part of the submission process for the ownership review and also that all submissions will be made public and be publicly available,” Kirton said.
“This has been the process that HBCT has followed in successive five-yearly reviews.
“We do intend reviewing the mechanics of the submission process to identify improvements that could be made for any potential future review.”
Anderson says there were 21 submissions ahead of the previous ownership review in 2018 and is heartened that more people participated this time.
One of those is Hawke’s Bay Regional Council member Jock Mackintosh, who says he included his mobile phone number in his submission because he intends to speak to his submission at the HBPCT public meeting on November 10 and presumes the trust will want to speak to him prior.
Jock Mackintosh has made a submission to the Hawke's Bay Power Consumers' Trust ownership review. Photo / NZME
Mackintosh believes the HBPCT has not been transparent enough with consumers, by not stating what their shares are potentially worth.
Free the Funds says the book value of the shares are worth $8000 and could garner $12,000 to $15,000, should individual consumers seek to sell theirs.
“I’m far from an expert, but I just felt the potential beneficiaries are flying a bit blind because there’s no indication of what the parcel of shares might be worth and, for me, that was a key bit of information missing,” Mackintosh said.
“My comment [at the HBPCT public meeting] will be primarily around that, which is to say you’ve only given people half the information and if they had the other half many of them would go ‘I didn’t know that’ and it might affect the way they think of it.
“Do you want to directly own your shares in a power company? Most people would say ‘no, I don’t think so’.
“But if you say to them ‘if you directly own them, this is the value of what you have’ then that would yield a different answer.”
Following the November 10 public meeting, the HBPCT will announce its decision on the ownership model at a further public meeting on November 17.
