Energy users get $310 payout

Almost 300,000 electricity customers are receiving tax-free dividend cheques for $310 each from the Auckland Energy Consumer Trust, whose members are up for re-election next month.

The payout amounts to a $93 million cash injection to the Auckland economy and represents a departure from past practice of crediting dividends from lines company Vector, of which the trust owns 75.1 per cent, to customers' power accounts.

That provoked criticism yesterday from trustee John Collinge, who has broken away from the majority centre-right Citizens and Ratepayers Now team on the five-member organisation to head the new Just Power ticket for next month's postal ballot.

"I didn't agree with it and frankly I think it's electioneering," Mr Collinge told the Weekend Herald.

He pointed to distribution difficulties the last time a dividend went out in cheque form - for $560 in 2001 - and was concerned at an information pamphlet hailing the latest payout in bold lettering next to a reminder of next month's election.

But the centre-left Powerlynk ticket's only incumbent trustee, Shale Chambers, joined his political opponents from C and R Now in defence of the payout as the most useful form of dividend for householders and other electricity consumers.

He said the size of the payout - $310 compared with $180 last year - was such that customers should have the right to decide how it should be spent rather than having to wait for any benefit against future electricity usage.

"Because it's $310 after tax it considerably exceeds the average household power bill - when it was $180 it was a different story," he said.

"I thought people should get the money and use it the way they wish - they can choose to do good things with their kids during the school holidays now, put some layby for Christmas, pay off some hire-purchase or apply it to their power accounts as they choose."

Asked about the potential effect of the cheques on the election, Mr Chambers acknowledged they were "a bit more in-your-face" than power-account credits.

But he said he was all in favour of Aucklanders understanding the ongoing benefit of keeping Vector in public ownership.

Trust chairman Warren Kyd acknowledged that the payout might lift the profile of the coming election but denied it was a sweetener for that purpose and said his organisation was legally obliged to distribute the dividend now.

Fellow C and R Now trustee Karen Sherry, a former chairwoman of the trust, said she had worked very hard to lift the dividend to its current level and accused Mr Collinge of "making mischief again".

The latest cheques, which began arriving in mail boxes on Thursday, bring to more than $546 million the total dividends paid by the trust since it was formed in 1993.

These have amounted to $2090 for each beneficiary.

But Mr Collinge said sending out cheques instead of directly crediting the dividends would have cost the trust more than $300,000 and raised a number of practical difficulties, such as if recipients failed to distribute the proceeds to flatmates contributing to an electricity account.

The trust's mailout invites customers without bank accounts to return their cheques and have dividends credited to their power accounts.


Trust Election

* Postal voting papers for the next three-year term of the trust will be mailed from October 11 to about 275,000 electricity consumers supplied by lines company Vector in Auckland and Manukau cities, and parts of Papakura District.

* Twenty candidates have registered in the contest for the five seats on the trust, of whom 15 are running on team tickets and five are independent.

* The centre-right Citizens and Ratepayers Now and centre-left Powerlynk teams will be joined in electoral battle this time by the new Just Power ticket of former National Party president John Collinge, who has broken away from C&R Now.