Keep on switching off is plea from Hodgson

Power savings must close in soon on the 10 per cent target to avoid serious problems, says Energy Minister Pete Hodgson.

As the latest figures showed savings had inched up to 5.4 per cent, Mr Hodgson told Parliament yesterday he did not think long hot-water cuts would come in the next week or two and he hoped they could be staved off further.

"The situation is potentially very serious if it doesn't rain and if we are unable to lift savings further," he said when he faced a volley of questions from opposition MPs.

"I'm pleased savings are continuing to climb steadily and are now past 5 per cent, but we must see savings closer to the 10 per cent target if we are to avoid more serious problems in the next few months."

National and Act MPs again accused Mr Hodgson of failing to learn from previous power shortages, and of ignoring the warning signs that pointed to a dry winter this year.

"We learned many lessons," he replied. "The transmission constraints have been identified and fixed and we have been working on long-term security of supply issues for some time."

Mr Hodgson said the 1992 crisis was taken as an example of failure in a centrally managed system, and after the 2001 shortage official advice was the market would self-correct.

"That is no longer a fair representation of their view, and it most certainly is not of mine," he said.

It had taken longer to fix than the Government wanted, "because we didn't realise how comprehensively [former energy minister] Max Bradford stuffed it up".

Act leader Richard Prebble said the Government might get a more positive response to the savings campaign if it stopped blaming everyone else for the situation.

- NZPA