Electricity Price Review panel

The panel requirements

The review required a panel that had a mixture of:

• electricity (past and current) expertise and experience
• innovation and technology focus
• consumer perspectives (both outside and within the industry)
• policy, legal and governance experience.

Panel members

Miriam Dean CNZM QC (Chair) - Miriam has extensive governance and commercial litigation experience. She is a Queen’s Counsel whose practice focuses on commercial, competition and consumer law, arbitration and mediation. She has chaired previous Government inquiries and was a member of the 2009 review into the electricity market.

Sue Chetwin - Sue is the chief executive of Consumer New Zealand and brings with her a wealth of experience in consumer advocacy. Sue is also a director of the Banking Ombudsman Scheme and a member of the Electricity Authority Retail Advisory Group.

John Hancock - John has had a 25-year career in the utilities and technology industries including 14 years with Ernst & Young, Capgemini and Hewlett Packard in the Asia Pacific. He has worked with a number of large international utilities on technological responses to industry trends.

Peter Harris – Peter is a former board member of the Electricity Commission and the Electricity Authority Establishment Board and served as an economic advisor to Michael Cullen in the Labour Government from 1999 to 2002.

Anne Herrington – Anne worked on the early development of the electricity wholesale market with the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand. She has extensive experience in the New Zealand energy market and energy pricing sectors, and has been representing consumers for the last 25 years including as a consumer representative on the Electricity Commission’s Retail Advisory Group.

Sue Roberts – Sue has over 30 years’ commercial experience, including 16 years in the energy sector in senior management and consultancy roles with Contact Energy, the Natural Gas Company, Genesis Energy and the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand. She is a current member of Electricity Rulings Panel.

John Small - John specialises in competition and regulatory economics plus mergers and commercial disputes. A director of Covec with 25 years’ consulting experience, he was formerly an academic economist at the University of Auckland.

Lee Wilson - Lee, formerly of Concept Consulting Group, has over 40 years’ experience in the energy sector in New Zealand. He has held a number of senior executive roles in the energy sector, and was also a founding director of the Electricity Market Company.