I can't believe that anyone in their right mind honestly thought...

I can't believe that anyone in their right mind honestly thought that de-reulating the electricity market and introducing "more competition' was going to reduce consumer prices. Look what happened when Hawke & Keating de-regulated banking and the new players arrived; after realising there wasn't a big enough pie for all to survive, they adopted the U.S. type business model (probably would've happened anyway), went away from generating most of their income from iterest rate differentials and became (licensed) service providers. The word BANKER, has now taken on a completely new meaning.
A sceptic like me could be forgiven for thinking that the energy and electricity competition policy is a red-herring, and nothing more than a means of causing society to explore and eventually implement greener energy solutions and at the same time allowing the priveleged corporates to fill their pockets on the way.
Don't be surprised if in 10yrs time it becomes
economically viable to generate most of ones own electricity needs.
Although the infrastructure is expensive at the moment, it's approaching that point for those willing to be satisfied with a 10-15 year break-even at todays costs