Here she is on electricity:
With shoes or toothpaste, increased demand gives economies of scale and tends to bring prices down. With electricity ... increased demand raises prices. (my emphasis)To be fair, I suspect she's just guilty of poor phrasing. What is interesting though is how she justifies the low level of competition in the electricity sector. Apparently there are diseconomies of scale there, according to Fitzsimons.
Hold up. What do diseconomies of scale mean for market structure? It means that the efficient number of firms is lots of small ones - which just so happens to be one of the conditions for a competitive market. This is because one big firm will produce stuff more expensively (per unit produced) than lots of little ones. It's when we see economies of scale that we start to see natural monopolies, or at least oligopolies. So by Fitzsimons' own reasoning, we should probably deregulate the electricity industry and let the market get to work. On the other hand, we should probably have state-run shoes and toothpaste factories.
To be fair on Fitzsimons, she does make other arguments that are somewhat more valid. However their proposal of staggered electricity rates (ie, increasing marginal cost) seems like a great way for the power companies to capture more surplus.
Related question: Should having taken first year Econ (at least) be a prerequisite for political service? Unfortunately then the New Zealand Green Party could cease to exist.
Note: I do think that the Green Party are great and a valuable addition to NZ politics - but they do have a habit of getting themselves confused about economic issues.
Update: Paul Walker does it a little more rigorously.