Dr Geoff Bertram - "is there a regulatory compact on electricity gentailer asset prices? If so, what does it say?

“Over the past twenty years residential electricity prices have doubled in real terms, driving many households into energy poverty. The Electricity Authority has argued in a recent paper that the resulting windfall profits and asset revaluations secured by the five large generator-retailers are in accordance with an “implicit regulatory compact”. Geoff Bertram believes that in fact the original regulatory compact renders the asset revaluations illegitimate, and that asset values ought to be rolled back to historic-cost with price reductions to match. Up to $1.5 billion per year is at stake (nearly $1,000 per year per household). Labour and the Greens propose to claw back only about half of this from the companies, which means their policy proposals are quite conservative – certainly not extremist and revolutionary as some business spokespersons have claimed.