BendigoWeekly www.bendigoweekly.com.au
ISSUE 1075 FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2018
Curious about the festival CAPITAL box office staff Amelia Hinneberg and Elizabeth Simpson are geared up for the release of the Bendigo Writers Festival printed program in today’s Weekly. The box office is ready and able to field inquiries about this year’s bumper program, and with 150 presenters and more than 100 events on offer, they are sure to be busy. – Story Page 2
WATER FALL Photo: ANDREW PERRYMAN
By JOEL PETERSON
CENTRAL Victorian water bills will drop for the first time since the millennium drought after the state regulator handed down Coliban Water’s pricing structure for the next five years. The Esssential Services Commission this week released its final decision on Coliban’s prices for the next five years, with water prices before inflation to drop five per cent through until 2023. Coliban’s average bills will be the second highest among the 16 water
■ Rocky
Bills to drop over the next five years
authorities in Victoria at an average of $1365 in 2018/19, $26 less than the average for the current financial year. A one per cent decrease will be passed on each year until the next water pricing review by the ESC. Coliban Water managing director Jeff Rigby said the pricing structure represented a fair result for both Coliban and its customers. “We believe it strikes the right
balance between the price of water that’s charged to customers going forward and being able to meet the revenue requirements for the organisation over the next five years,” he said. All water authorities are required to submit their pricing plan to the ESC every five years, before the regulator makes a final determination. Coliban’s proposal of a revenue cap as opposed to a price cap was rejected, the ESC report stating the
path toward mountain bike track – Page 3
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revenue cap model “could result in prices that don’t reflect our assessment of efficient costs”. Mr Rigby said the organisation had accepted the decision. “Fundamentally, Coliban Water is only looking to make sufficient revenue over the long run in order for it to be able to meet its operating cost needs, its capital needs and maintain its debt levels,” Mr Rigby said. The ESC rated Coliban as ad-
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vanced under its PREMO performance monitoring system. The pricing structure is a significant departure from that introduced at the start of 2013 when Coliban had recorded a decade of financial losses and passed on a 36 per cent increase in bills in the five-year regulatory period. “We’ve been able to stabilise pricing off the back of some siginifcant increases that have occurred previously, which came after large-scale investments that were made back during the drought period,” Mr Rigby said. Continued Page 2
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