Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

VIOLI () (): The shadow minister covered a lot except price, and price is really important. The shadow minister and I visited a business called Aussie Growers Fruits in Silvan in my electorate with an owner called Laurie. The reason price is so important is because it impacts households when they get their bills. But it impacts businesses, which then impacts households through inflation, and we all know that we're going through one of the greatest inflation crises this country has seen. I will use Laurie's business as an example, and this can be any business across the country. They do food manufacturing. Their energy prices in the last 12 months have gone up $200,000. Laurie is actually lucky. He is on a good fixed contract with his gas at the moment but that is coming off this year, and they are anticipating that their energy prices are going to go up another $200,000 in the next financial year.

But it is not just the price that goes up for Laurie; it is the supply chain. He gets glass in for his products. The price of that is going up. He gets product in from farmers. The price of that is going up because the cost of energy for farmers is going up. And the ultimate result is that the prices of product that he sells to Woolworths and Coles and Aldi and Costco and others have to go up, then they pass that onto the Australian people. When we talk about energy prices needing to come down, it is not just the bills that Australians receive every day; it is every time they go to the supermarket they pay that bill.

This government know that this is a complicated issue but they were very happy during the campaign to simplify it down to one number—$275. They were going to reduce power bills. They used modelling that they received in December of 2021 to continue to make that claim 97 times and, disappointingly, they chose to continue to use that modelling to make that claim at least 30 times after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which significantly altered the energy market. So there is no doubt, especially after taking the opportunity to use modelling, that they would have known it was not relative. So the question to the minister is the government promised a $275 reduction in household energy bills, yet prices are set to go up again by nearly a third come 1 July. Will you admit you have broken your promise to the Australian people? Because people voted in good faith and they are now paying the price every day. But it's not just the prices that we're receiving now. Prices are forecast to continue to go up. The government will talk about their short-term plan, but it's not working, and Australians know that. They know it's not working every time they go to the grocery store and have to pay. I saw two for $11 as the price of Kettle chips, on special, in the supermarket. It was two for $11, for 165 grams.

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