The opposition to power reforms of the 1990s and their architect Max Bradford were a significant contributing factor to the loss of the seat of Otago for National’s Gavan Herlihy.
David Parker, who won the seat, told a pre-election meeting in 2002 that they were one of the factors which motivated him to stand for Labour.
But were they really so bad?
Kiwiblog has a graphic, originally from the ODT, which shows they did work as intended:
Regulation and re-regulation aren’t the only factors which affected prices.
The reliance on hydro generation puts pressure on supply and therefore price if there is a drought which reduces the water flow into the lakes behind dams.
But prices went down when retail competition was introduced and went up again when Labour re-regulated the electricity market.
For a moment I thought you had been taken by the dark side Ele. Immediately thought you were referring to Sue.