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Category: States and Territories / Electricity Energy and Utilities

Source of apparent Hydro Tasmania leak unresolved: Treasurer

Friday, 2 Sep 2016 08:38:48

The Treasurer said he would be giving "deeper thought" about what to do. (ABC News)

The Tasmanian Government is considering its next move to find out who was responsible for documents being leaked from a parliamentary inquiry into the state's energy crisis.

Committee chairman Ivan Dean has dismissed the Government's allegations of an unauthorised leak of Hydro Tasmania documents.

The Government has previously accused Labor's Scott Bacon of giving the media a letter provided to the committee by the state-owned power company.

Mr Dean said each committee member had advised him they were not responsible for any unauthorised disclosure.

"I'm confident that the events have not compromised the ability of the committee to complete its inquiry and in accordance with its terms of reference," he said in a statement.

Mr Gutwein said he still wanted to know where the leak came from.

"The matter to some degree is still unresolved," he told 936 ABC Hobart.

"I think it's a matter of fact that there are documents in the public domain that the committee had received.

"I know Mr Dean's statement from last night and I certainly want to give some deeper thought to what our next steps might be in this."

Leaking information from the Public Accounts Committee is considered a serious violation of committee rules.

The letter from Hydro advises that it would need to sell the Tamar Valley Power Station to deliver on the Government's revenue expectations.

Hydro dividend pressure dismissed

The inquiry is examining how the state dealt with the energy crisis which occurred after an unprecedented combination of low Hydro dams and an extended outage of the Basslink undersea cable to Victoria.

Mr Gutwein hit back at claims in the inquiry that the Government made the crisis worse because of pressure on Hydro to return a dividend.

Labor claims the Government forced Hydro to sell its $75 million power station, leading into the energy crisis.

"The combined cycle gas turbine was not sold, let's be clear, it was not sold," he said.

"We still have it and it ran through the period when we had the Basslink failures."

He said there was no expectation of a $75 million dividend from Hydro Tasmania.

"Hydro returned a dividend last year, the profile changed completely, the $75 million dividend is no longer in the budget."

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