This is edition 2026/035 of the Ten@10 newsletter.
Hi all,
This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.
Enjoy!
1. The Electricity rip-off that politicians won’t fix
Bryce Edwards
- ⚡ The Big Four gentailers —Contact Energy, Genesis Energy, Meridian Energy, and Mercury Energy — posted $1.86b in half-year earnings (up 45%) and lifted dividends 10%, while investment in new generation stayed flat.
- 💸 Household power prices rose 12.2% last year, with further hikes looming (7% from Meridian, up to 30% for some Genesis customers), hitting families during a severe cost-of-living crisis.
- 🏛️ Commentator Duncan Garner argues the 1990s electricity reforms under Max Bradford failed to deliver real competition, calling current profits “embarrassing” and political leaders out of touch.
- 🗣️ Former National leader Simon Bridges says energy costs are the top concern for businesses, slams “puff piece” media coverage, and calls the gentailer dominance (over 90% of generation and retail) “outrageous.”
- 🏢 Consumer and business groups align: Consumer NZ says gentailers’ “social licence” is fading, with nearly half of surveyed Kiwis viewing power bills as unfair and profits unjustified.
- 🔌 Independent retailers are disappearing — including Flick Electric and Frank Energy — reinforcing claims the market structure is dysfunctional and stacked against competition.
- 👑 Three gentailers are 51% Crown-owned, meaning the Government both regulates and profits from high prices — creating a major conflict of interest.
- 🏗️ Critics argue the gentailer model (generation + retail combined) creates an oligopoly, weak competition, and incentives to prioritise dividends over investment, with wholesale pricing rewarding cheap hydro at high marginal rates.
- 📊 Polling shows 49% support breaking up gentailers’ generation and retail arms, and 62% back government underwriting of new generation to lower prices — indicating broad public appetite for reform.
- 🧨 NZ First’s Shane Jones is the lone MP explicitly promising to campaign on breaking up or renationalising gentailers, while leaders like Christopher Luxon, Chris Hipkins, and David Seymour avoid structural reform.
- 🏚️ The electricity market is framed as emblematic of “Broken New Zealand”: concentrated corporate power, political inertia, rising costs, and a public paying for assets it originally funded.
