Opinion: Changes not properly explained to public

THE article concerning the Melville South Underground Power Project (“Shock after new charge: Homeowners billed again after City stuff up”, Melville Times 18/7) highlighted just one of the numerous inadequacies in the administration of the State Underground Power Program (SUPP).

There have been a number of significant changes to the SUPP recently, and none have been properly explained to the public.

In Rounds 1 to 5 (Melville South was a Round 5 project), projects were judged solely on their impact on the reliability of the distribution network.

The other criteria (local government funding contribution of 50 per cent of the project cost and the support of at least 50 per cent of respondents to a community survey) were pass-or-fail and did not affect a proposal’s score.

This perfectly sensible approach was abandoned in Round 6.

Major residential projects were instead assigned scores based on network priority (which made up 50 per cent of the total score), local government funding contribution and community support (25 per cent each).

The network priority score is the most contentious, because it ranked projects according to the financial risk posed to Western Power by ageing infrastructure.

Proposals that targeted areas served by older infrastructure (and greatest financial liability) were awarded a higher network priority score.

The City of Melville lodged 13 proposals in Round 6 of the SUPP, of which nine went to survey.

Community support had little bearing on the projects that were ultimately selected – the highest ranking project (Kardinya South) scored second last in terms of community support and survey participation rate.

There is one other small thing. In Melville South the increase in cost was shared between Western Power and the City of Melville.

Under the Round 6 funding arrangements, any similar escalation will be met entirely by property owners in Kardinya South, Alfred Cove East or Melville North, as the case may be.

GRAEME FULLER

Kardinya