Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the issue of power bills. Check your power bill lately? Did you wince? Have government rebates all dried up and the bills spiked? Where's your money going when you shell out hundreds every quarter? To build more energy infrastructure? To operating costs? No. It's going to the profits of huge energy corporations—record profits lately, in fact. If you're with AGL, $755 of your energy bill each year is pure profit for that corporation. AGL isn't producing your energy; it's just a retailer, just a shonky middleman. AGL's CEO makes $3.5 million each year. That's where your money is going.

There's simply no reason it has to be like this. We used to have a fully publicly owned energy sector with energy run at cost and no profits made. Now we have private energy corporations gouging us to access our energy. Who sold our energy system off to private corporations? It was the Liberals and Labor, who now receive millions in political donations from these corporations. We've got to get corporate profiteering out of our essential services. Privatisation was a mistake. When the government says it can't do anything about huge energy bills, I say they're pulling your leg.