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

I appreciate the Greens' interest in our party room, because they are the party of the carbon tax. They are the party, in partnership with the Labor Party, which saw electricity prices increase each and every year when they were in office. Prices doubled. The member for Melbourne should know better. The modelling that was undertaken by ACIL Allen was for the Energy Security Board, and their detailed report very clearly made public the technology costs, fuel costs, capital costs, exchange rate, inflation rate—all the inputs which went into establishing that, together with the National Energy Guarantee, Australian households will be $550 a year better off, which will see the wholesale price of power come down by about 20 per cent. That is significant. That means hundreds of thousands of dollars to be saved by hospitals and supermarkets, and millions of dollars to be saved by chemical and paper manufacturers—blue-collar workers that the Greens don't even pretend to represent, because the Greens are all about ideology. The coalition, when it comes to energy policy, is focusing on engineering and economics. The reality is that we have listened to the independent experts, that this policy has been backed by business, industry and consumer groups, and that this policy, together with existing policies, will reduce power prices by $550 a year.

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