About 30,000 homes and businesses in Sydney’s lower North Shore were without electricity for 12 hours last week, after a substation in Gladesville overheated. This followed power failures elsewhere on the North Shore the previous night and in south-west Sydney two weeks previously.

“These blackouts will continue,” said NSW Opposition acting energy and utilities spokeswoman Peta Seaton.

“It will become an almost daily occurrence as it has been in the last week, unless Bob Carr abandons his dividend policy, which is ripping millions of dollars out of power companies that should be being invested in maintenance and upgrade.”

Seaton said the Carr Government last year took $169 million in dividends from EnergyAustralia and was forecast to take another $504 million over the next three years.

Ms Seaton said EnergyAustralia admitted last year that 23 substations were overloaded and at increased risk of power failure.

But NSW Energy and Utilities Minister, Frank Sartor, denied Wednesday’s blackout was due to infrastructure under-spending.

His office claimed the Carr Government would spend $5.6 billion on energy infrastructure over the next five years.

EnergyAustralia chief executive Paul Broad, also ruled out any link between the blackout and lack of investment.

“We’re spending $2.2 billion over the next five years upgrading the network,” he said.

Broad said the dividends paid to the Government were not causing problems for the power company. He said there had been a big increase in capital spending, from $170 million seven years ago to $450 million this year.

Meanwhile, in WA, local government has called for the Gallop Government to increase the level of infrastructure maintenance and construction to be undertaken throughout regional areas.

The Western Australian Local Government Association (WALGA) has demanded that Western Power be allowed to keep a higher proportion of the dividend payable to the State Government in order to use that money for infrastructure maintenance.

WALGA president Cr Bill Mitchell said many regional councils were concerned at the lack of maintenance conducted on electrical infrastructure by Western Power.

“Power outages in the regions are all too common,” he said.

“Sometimes power is out for more than 24 hours at a time. This creates financial hardship for businesses. Some shops and supermarkets have been forced on numerous occasions to throw out foods that have thawed, and they can no longer get insurance to cover this problem. And in some cases hospitals and aged care homes have been affected, putting lives at risk.”

The Gallop Government was spending $1.2m on an advertising campaign for Western Power but stinting on funding for essential maintenance and infrastructure upgrades, Cr Mitchell said.

And in Queensland, Premier Peter Beattie has long been under great pressure to fix the state’s electricity network. The suicide of Energex CEO Greg Maddock and subsequent resignations – first of Energex chairman Don Nissen, then of replacement Greg Dunning – have only added to the heat.

The Somerville Report on the state’s power network found that the state’s electricity assets had been milked hard for profits and spending on the network had been cut by about $1 billion in the past decade.

The network became worn, trees grew across the lines and there was no margin for error when storms hit or car crashes knocked over poles. The report found the network needed ‘significant’ spending to return it to ‘an acceptable level of performance’ and position it to cope with spiralling demand, particularly at peak times.

However, the report also noted that the reliability of the Energex network was ‘slightly better’ than the Australian average in 2002-03 and no amount of spending could have protected the network from the full effects of last summer’s severe storm season.

The Premier’s office has issued a ‘fact sheet’ on electricity distribution that argued it was appropriate that these businesses make profits that Government could use to fund programs for taxpayers in areas such as health and education.

“It should be noted that states such as Victoria and South Australia have privatised their network assets, so these dividends are paid to the private owners of the assets,” Beattie’s office stated.