Please support your claim with some evidence. I worked in the contestable electricity distribution business for 8 years from 2001 to 2009 and I can assure that your claim is complete bollocks.
Exactly. I worked at Powercor and Citipower - two distribution licenses but one parent company that ran a shared-everything operation across the two. We cost a bit more than one company to run but we’re able to recoup as if we were two wholly independent operations. The whole contestable distribution market was/is a huge scam.