Kalgoorlie business owners say 50 per cent increase in power contracts could kill small local businesses

Two Kalgoorlie business owners are standing up for themselves and small business owners who have a “gun held to their heads” by “price gouging” power providers. Ashok Parekh and Billy-Ray Stokes have joined forces to fight against “unfair” price hikes to local business electricity contracts which they say have seen their own costs rise by about 50 per cent. While the Palace Hotel owner and local accountant says he can afford the increases, Mr Parekh says the hikes would add more financial pressure to local businesses already doing it tough, and could result in more doors being permanently closed. He said the new contracts would see him paying an additional $6000 a month for power, a cost which could be devastating for smaller businesses. “If you walk down Hannan Street you can see how many shops are already closed,” he said. “The rents are going up, the interest has gone up, wages are going up — it’s already tough out there for a lot these businesses . . . and now the electricity is going up. “It’s not going to be viable to run a lot of businesses.” With Kalgoorlie-Boulder experiencing several long power outages in recent years, Mr Stokes said the price hike was “absolute madness”. After reaching out to various agencies and departments searching for an explanation and someone to help make a change, Mr Stokes said he was simply told it was “market pricing”. “None of these regulatory bodies are taking any level of ownership . . . and us business owners are the ones being left out to dry,” he said. “If they were to say: ‘Hey, Billy, you know what? We’re going to be upgrading the entire network and infrastructure, and we’re going to have the most reliable system and that’s why we’re putting up 50 per cent’ I’d be like, ‘f… it, make it 100 per cent, I never want to lose my power’. “But there’s none of that. There’s no explanation. And maybe there is something happening behind the scenes, but there’s no communication of it, so to us it just looks like price gouging.” Mr Stokes said his biggest gripe was that it was unregulated and there were only two providers available to choose from. “We got quotes from both and they were within one per cent of each other, one included GST and the other didn’t,” he said. “That’s not competitive, that’s absolute madness. “It’s not even a choice of the lesser of the two evils. It’s the same evil. “I feel like we don’t have a choice and there is a gun to our heads and it’s just ‘too bad’.” Mr Stokes said he knew there were many businesses in town that would be hit by these rises more than his own two businesses would, and someone had to try and fight for them. “I’m not up here playing the fiddle just for me, there are a lot of businesses already doing it tight, businesses who are not busy, and they’re all going to be significantly impacted by this,” he said. “So many businesses don’t know what to do about it, so they just say ‘OK, we have to work harder’ and that’s not the answer. “Or they are forced to close their doors, and that’s not what we want to see either. “What happens then is the community and society loses a lot of the colour that makes it what it is.” In response to questions from the Kalgoorlie Miner about rising contract costs earlier this year, a Synergy spokesperson said the “vast majority” of business customers in Kalgoorlie were on government-regulated tariffs. They said businesses which consume more than 50MWh of electricity per year were contestable customers who could choose their electricity retailer. “Synergy works hard to minimise the costs it can control and offer competitively priced energy to its contestable customers,” the spokesperson said. “For contestable customers pricing in their contracts is reflective of the price of electricity in the wholesale electricity market which is an independent competitive market that Synergy participates in. “Contestable customers can choose to be placed on a two or three-year contract. Consequently, some contestable customers may have experienced a cost-reflective increase.”