George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

through you, Mr President—in fact, what we saw with the election of the coalition government in 2013 was the sharpest reduction of electricity prices on record, as a direct result of the repeal of the carbon tax. Do you remember the carbon tax, Senator Dastyari? It was the tax that Ms Julia Gillard promised never to introduce, then—on the footing of a false promise made at the 2010 election—did introduce, that caused power prices to undergo their sharpest increase on record, so that, over the six-year period of the Labor government, power prices—the cost to households of electricity—doubled. It was an increase of 101 per cent, in fact, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Since the election of the coalition government, the power price has stabilised. First it fell—it fell by the sharpest decline in electricity costs in 2014 when we repealed the carbon tax—and then it crept up a little. But, over the four years of the coalition government, the average price has stabilised. As a result of the measures announced today by the Prime Minister and by Mr Frydenberg, based on the advice of the Energy Security Board, we can now expect prices to fall by between $110 and $115 per annum, as a result of those measures alone. That is in addition to, I might say, Senator Dastyari, the other measures, like, for example, the abolition of limited merits review, which the ACCC also predicted would lead to downward pressure on electricity prices.