What will ministers tell electricity bosses as energy reform decision looms?

More coal-fired electricity generation may be required to plug the gap left by the gas supply collapse. (Image: Supplied)

Pattrick Smellie

Thu, 11 Sep 2025

When the chief executives of the “big four” electricity companies file into Energy Minister Simon Watts’s office on Thursday, it will be for a far more consequential discussion than its status as a monthly “catch-up” implies.With Watts will be the finance minister, Nicola Willis, who will presumably deliver a pro-competition lecture to Mike Fuge, Mike Roan, Stewart Hamilton, and Malcolm Johns, the CEOs, respectively, of Contact, Meridian, Mercury, and Genesis Energy.Whatever message she delivers, it will likely be...

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