Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Sydney for her question. I can read from an ACCC report, which says about the abolition of the carbon tax that the Commonwealth Treasury's estimated $550 cost saving to households is reasonable. So there we go—the Labor Party is at it again, telling a mistruth like the one that they have repeated in this House about a $1,000 increase. That goes against the advice of the Australian Energy Regulator and other agencies, and they haven't had the courage to repeat it in this place. We have been very successful not just in abolishing the carbon tax; we have also seen the wholesale spot price for gas come down from about $12 at the beginning of this year to about $7 right now. We have been putting pressure on the Queensland Labor government to rein in CS Energy and Stanwell, who are engaged in uncompetitive bidding practices. As a result of that direction, we have seen wholesale electricity prices in Queensland fall by about 25 per cent.

Then, of course, there is the work the Prime Minister did with retailers. I can inform the House that a family of four from Turramurra in Sydney with electricity costs of just under $2,800 a year used the government's Energy Made Easy website to switch suppliers, and as a result they will save around $650 a year. A family with three students were living in St Kilda, in Melbourne, and they had electricity costs of about $1,420 a year. They used the Victorian electricity website and they saved around $230 a year. A family of three living in Ashgrove, in Brisbane, had electricity costs of $2,850 a year, and as a result of the Prime Minister's intervention and promotion of the ability to switch retailers and contracts, they used the government's Energy Made Easy website, they switched suppliers and as a result they will save about $630 a year. Under our proposal, recommended to us by the Energy Security Board, the savings to households will be better than the ones that were promoted by the clean energy target—which the member for Port Adelaide himself described as a second-best option.

The Labor Party are isolated. They are standing alone in opposition to the recommendation from the experts. The industry, the big users and the industry organisations have all come around to support this initiative as being one that will deliver reliable, affordable power. (Time expired)

See this speech in context