Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The issue at hand is energy or, rather, the lack of affordable, stable energy and its brutal role in driving our cost-of-living crisis. The kitchen table debate in Fowler is no longer about saving $5 on a power bill. It's about paying for the power bill or putting food on the table. It's about a government whose energy policy has become less about practical engineering and economic stability and more about ideological virtue signalling.

When the Reserve Bank released its most recent figures, warning signs were flashing red. Annual headline inflation has jumped to 3.2 per cent. This is not abstract economics; this is a tax on every working family. And what is the single biggest contributing factor to this fight? It's the energy sector. The data confirms that households are spending a devastating 33.9 per cent more on electricity than they were just a year ago. A 33.9 per cent price hike on an essential service is not inflation. It's economic sabotage, inflicted by a chaotic market and poor planning.

But the pain doesn't stop at the power meter. The energy shock travels straight down the supply chain and lands with crushing weight in the shopping trolley. Food manufacturers are telling us that their gas and energy costs have soared by more than 50 per cent over the last three years.

Do you know who pays for the costs when the manufacturer, the truck driver and the local supermarket pass it on? It's the battlers of Western Sydney and the families of Fowler. The price of milk, the price of bread and the price of fresh vegetables—these are all now inflated by the soaring price of keeping the lights on. It's unacceptable that, in a country blessed with abundant resources, we are forcing low-to-middle-income families to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children. Right now, energy pricing feels like a lottery. On Monday, the spot price is low; by Wednesday afternoon, it's sky-high. On Thursday at lunchtime, it can even go negative. Businesses can't budget like this. Small business can't plan like this. The manufacturers certainly can't invest like this.

The volatility and opacity of the market are costing Australians dearly. How did we get there? There are three hard truths. First, we broke a working system and replaced it with an expensive one. For most of our history, electricity was treated as essential public infrastructure. Communities like Tamworth led in the 1880s with first electric lighting system. Later, states built integrated systems that were boring, reliable and cheap. In the 1990s, we split those utilities into dozens of generators, a handful of network monopolies and a thicket of retailers. We were promised competition and lower prices. What we got was complexity, marketing overheads and bills that outpace inflation year after year. Productivity fell even as managers and sales teams multiplied, and every new cost found its way onto the bill.

Second, the rules reward margin over merit. Wholesale prices have fallen sharply from the 2022 peak, yet retail bills barely budged. Why? Because the highest cost generator of electricity sets the price for everyone, because gas, now getting more expensive, often sets the price even when the market goes negative, meaning electricity is running for free through the network. Households don't see the benefit. The system is not built to deliver the lowest cost to consumers; it's built to preserve margins in the middle.

Third, high energy costs are hollowing our industry. Cheap, reliable power once offset high labour costs—not anymore. Electricity and gas input costs have risen dramatically since 2000. When glass furnaces go cold, when fertiliser production winds back and when local plastics and chemicals shut, those are not isolated headlines; they are markets heading for deindustrialisation, fewer skilled jobs and weaker supply chains.

Australians are tired of finger-pointing. They want actions that cut bills and restore stability. Here are some practical agenda in parliament that we should adopt: make east coast gas work for Australians and put in place a durable domestic reservation and transparent wholesale benchmarks so gas cannot be exported at the expense of households and industry. When gas sets the marginal price, the whole marketplace brings that marginal price down. Mandate retail transparency and passthrough. Require automatic passthrough of wholesale falls, including negative price events, onto standing and market offers. Publish on a single page the breakdowns of every bill—energy, networks, schemes, retail costs and profit. If a retailer can't explain a bill plainly, they shouldn't be selling it. Modernise tariffs for the solar era: create ultralow daytime tariffs to soak up majority of midday solar glut so that households can charge hot water systems, EVs and batteries between 10 am and 3 pm. Retire legacy off-peak, night-only thinking. That is no longer much how the grid actually operates.

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