The Justice and Equity Centre provided a submission to IPART’s Issues Paper on Hunter Water Pricing Proposal for the 2025-30 regulatory period.
The JEC was deeply involved in Hunter Water’s community engagement process that underpins their pricing proposal. Our submission provides feedback on the robustness of the community engagement process and the validity of the decisions Hunter Water has made as a result of consumer preferences expressed during the engagement process.
Our submission also provides feedback on the proposed expenditure, from our perspective as consumer advocates for NSW households. The context for Hunter Water’s Pricing Proposal is a particularly challenging one. Consumers are experiencing prolonged cost-of-living challenges, there is planned population growth for the Hunter region, climate risks for water are increasing and Hunter Water’s infrastructure is aging and in need of renewal and replacement. These challenges are increasingly impacting water utilities across the country, not just Hunter Water. In our submission, the JEC raise questions as to who is best placed to bear the cost of important investments to address these challenges and recommend examining alternative or additional means to ensure consumers only carry a fair share of costs to ensure water services remain affordable over following decades.
