Prime Time TV for Geraldine Croquet Club
We hope the Croquet community were watching Fair Go on Monday 14 March 2022. The friendly Geraldine Croquet Club in South Canterbury fronted up in terrible weather to play for the Fair Go cameras and make a point of rising electricity prices while having a bit of fun.
We were highlighting a serious power cost issue in our community but had a great experience filming and learning all that goes on behind the scenes. It was nearly 5 hours of filming to produce the 7-minute segment.
As with all clubs we try and keep costs down and membership subs reasonable so all can join. We use hardly any power but pay high daily fixed charges. Our Club tried different power companies, but no one would quote low user rates which you can only get if you are residential. The croquet club and many sports and community groups pay commercial rates. We also contacted Alpine Energy our local lines company who were very helpful but couldn’t change our meter.
An electrician recommended asking for a Bach plan. If you have a second home, you can get low user rates for it under these schemes. We knew it was a long shot but gave that a go too. The president of the club suggested we could sleep there occasionally to make it work. That didn’t work either.
Running out of options we wrote to Fair Go. To our delight we got a reply and over the last 6 months we have been working on getting an opportunity to film (Auckland lockdown slowed it down) and we finally got this to air.
In Sept 2021 we found out that the government was removing Low user electricity tariffs from 1 April 2022. Fair Go thought our story would help raise awareness that many people living on their own could have their power bills double. That affects a lot of Geraldine residents on fixed incomes and there was virtually no publicity on it.
Fair Go head out to the communities on a tight budget with one reporter and a camera man and everyone mucks in and helps. We were working with Garth Bray and our cameraman was Rewi. Filming is often weather dependant and unfortunately, we had some rain on the day. At short notice we got as many members down to play and gather up all the props to dress the club rooms as a Bach. Fair Go came up with this idea to make it interesting after hearing Presidents Jacks comments. It spiced things up as electricity can be a bit boring. Keeping the camera dry was a priority as you will see from the photo. Many shots were done several times which took the time. We had no idea how much was involved but everyone pitched in to make it work and there were many laughs. We started at about 2 pm and we finally finished about 7 pm.
With Fair Go coverage we managed to raise the issue of the changes to the low user rates and promote the issues of costs for clubs and community groups. While we couldn’t reduce our monthly power account, we received a $200 community donation from Trustpower and the Alpine Energy have offered to talk to us about sponsorship of an event. We also featured Croquet on prime-time television. We hope that some more local Geraldine people will come along and give Croquet a go. A few more members to join our friendly club would be great.
If anyone missed the segment they can watch it on TVNZ On Demand, Fairgo, 14th March.
Or on FairGo Facebook Page
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