PM pledges to fix 'Bradford's mess'

By KEVIN TAYLOR political reporter

Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday lashed former National Energy Minister Max Bradford for the electricity market "mess", and promised reforms were coming.

Under questioning by opposition parties in Parliament, she defended her minister, Pete Hodgson, and said both the weather and National Government reforms were to blame for a looming winter power crisis.

"The fact is that the weather and previous Governments have a great deal to do with it. We can't do much about the weather but we can do something about Max Bradford's mess," she said.

Mr Bradford, who is no longer an MP, later said the constant blame being put on him and the last National Government for the emerging power crisis was becoming "tedious and tiresome".

Rather than face up to the real problems, too many Labour MPs and ministers simply wanted to blame someone else for avoiding politically difficult decisions after the 2001 crisis, he said.

"When the Resource Management Act and the Kyoto Protocol stand in the way of creating new generating capacity, we don't get electricity," Mr Bradford said.

"By Helen Clark's own admission, the electricity market will continue with some needed change I would probably support.

"So Labour can't continue to blame the market or the last National Government or former Ministers of Energy for today's problems."

Act leader Richard Prebble asked how the Government could blame the market model when it owned all the transmission lines and 70 per cent of the generating capacity.

"It's the Government that is stopping schemes like the Dobson hydro scheme going ahead," he said.

Opposition parties have been concentrating for weeks on the 50-megawatt project proposed near Greymouth.

The plan was rejected by Conservation Minister Chris Carter because the area to be flooded was an important ecological zone, but National maintains the area features more gorse than native trees.

Helen Clark told Parliament the energy market was "certainly flawed" and would undergo change to ensure standby generation was available when needed.

She said "significant changes" to the market model would be revealed soon. That announcement is expected this month.

Meanwhile, Mr Hodgson told Parliament that the Cabinet had made no decision to legislate to lower the minimum operating level of hydro storage lakes.