A WA Liberal Government will reverse Roger Cook’s neglect of the Goldfields’ power supply, putting an end to lost stock, lost wages and shuttered small businesses, according to WA Liberal Leader Libby Mettam.

“Roger Cook ignoring the rolling blackouts in Kalgoorlie is pushing the cost of living up for voters, with lost stock for small businesses, and lost wages for their workers,” said Ms Mettam.

“When businesses across the Goldfields keep losing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock, they have no choice but to pass on the cost to consumers.

“A Mettam-led Liberal Government will partner with Northern Star Resources to deliver an electricity guarantee to Kalgoorlie.

“Our Building a Better Future blueprint makes it abundantly clear that we will pull every lever to put downward pressure on cost-of-living, while restoring regional services, this is another plank in delivering those commitments.”

Under a WA Liberal Government, Western Power will work constructively with Northern Star and the existing generation assets of other private suppliers to take excess capacity, not required by KCGM, to stabilise energy supply in the Goldfields while new generation capacity is developed.

“Roger Cook has known about these issues for years, with abundantly clear warnings in their own budget papers but has done nothing,” said Ms Mettam.

“Those warnings have become a reality every summer for the people of Kalgoorlie, who have no power, no water, no phone access and in some cases no fuel.”

“Kalgoorlie is a major regional city, it shouldn’t be living through rolling and extended blackouts that can take days to resolve,” said Neil Thomson, Shadow Treasurer and Member for the Mining and Pastoral Region.

“These power outages have a major impact hitting residents and local businesses directly in the hip pocket while putting the community at risk,” said Mr Thomson

Rowena Olsen welcomed the news, saying it would make a difference to the cost-of-living for households in the Goldfields.

“WA has lived through the biggest boom in our state’s history, our biggest inland city shouldn’t still have intermittent power supply,” said Ms Olsen, Liberal Candidate for Kalgoorlie.

“If you can’t guarantee power supply, you can’t run a business, and you can’t run a household.

“Guaranteeing electricity supply for Kalgoorlie will mean businesses don’t need to make up hundreds of thousands in lost stock that they have no choice but to pass onto consumers, helping take some pressure of the cost of living locally.”

Shadow Minister for Energy, Steve Thomas said the Government had failed to respond adequately to the February 2022 and January 2024 Kalgoorlie blackouts.

“The Government’s problem is that it has only installed 57 megawatts of back up for Kalgoorlie which has a peak demand of around twice that, which it should have known since 2022” Dr Thomas said.

“That is why the backup system has repeatedly failed during power outages.

“Additional generation capacity announced this year and coming online in 2026 is welcomed news for the Goldfields, but Kalgoorlie deserves to have reliable baseload power before then.

“At the time of the 2022 power outages former Energy Minister, Bill Johnston told the media “we would love to see more investment into generators in the Goldfields”.

“But nothing has been delivered for the intervening three years except excuses, and if another storm hits the only alternative now is to work with the private sector to add more energy, at least until the Government back up is hopefully ready in 2026.”