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Renee Johnstone says she lost about $6,500 in earnings after a major power outage shut down her cafe in a rural Queensland city on the weekend.
Key points:
- There have been three major outages in Mount Isa in the last two months
- Residents say small businesses are suffering while providers get away with failing to supply critical services
- They say greater accountability and community engagement is needed on behalf of providers
The power was down for approximately four hours in Mount Isa on Saturday in what was the third major outage in the region in the last two months.
"This isn't just costing all the businesses that rely on our Saturday trade to fund the rest of the week," Ms Johnstone said.
"It affects our staff who we have to send home without a wage that day."
Residents and community leaders are fed up with what they say is a lack of accountability from providers such as APA, which runs the region's Diamantina Power Station.
The last major blackout was on March 21 and another outage cut off Telstra services on Mother's Day, downing EFTPOS machines at busy cafes and markets.
"I am getting really annoyed and angry at these outages," Katter's Australian Party leader and local MP Robbie Katter said.
"Sure, out here we can cop an outage once in a blue moon, but this is Third World stuff."
Ms Johnstone is calling for consequences and wants compensation from providers.
"Why does this keep happening?" she said.
"Someone needs to take some ownership of it."
Cashflow pain and stock risks
Ms Johnstone's Saturday earnings fund the cafe's grocery order for the next week.
Because of the power outage, the business lost food stock and Ms Johnstone had to dip into her personal savings to fund the following week's trade.
"As a small business owner, you are constantly trying to cut costs and work toward that one or two per cent increase in income," she said.
"But when something like this happens, it sets you back a long way."
With several thousands of dollars' worth of food sitting in her cool rooms, the frequency and length of an outage is a major source of anxiety for Ms Johnstone.
"There's a lot of conversations that go on at night when you lay down and put your head to the pillow — do we need to invest in a generator?" she said.
"That would be another huge cost to the business."
Mount Isa pharmacist Leigh Houldsworth says power outages risk the mass loss of vital medicine that is already hard to source in the rural town.
"We probably have close to $80,000 worth of stock we desperately try to save, and it's stuff that's really difficult to get out here," she said during a previous blackout.
"So if we lose it, it's really hard to replace."
'Reliability is only deteriorating'
Mr Katter said the frequency of major outages showed companies such as APA had little accountability for the crippling impact of failed services on outback communities.
"The Diamantina Power Station is a nice, new power plant — it should not be tripping out like that and be so unreliable for a community of this size," he said.
"No-one would put up with this in the south-east corner.
"Power prices are going up and the reliability is only deteriorating.
"Everyone needs to get angry about this, and let's not normalise this and not become accustomed to it."
In a statement to ABC North West Qld, APA said it was still investigating the cause of Saturday's outage.
"APA's onsite crew responded to the outage immediately and worked closely with Ergon Energy … to identify and rectify the cause of the issue to restore power safely to the region," the provider said.
"Our initial assessment indicates there was a technical issue in the plant that has been resolved.
"APA continues to investigate the root cause of that fault.
"We apologise for the inconvenience during the outage and thank our customers and the community for their patience."