Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

As we have previously discussed in this place on a number of occasions, there have been substantial increases in electricity prices for some years. The vast majority of those have occurred as a result of investment in poles and wires, and the Prime Minister has indicated her intention to work through the COAG process to try to ensure that we see a more efficient way of dealing with these network issues so that consumers are protected from the sorts of price increases we have seen over recent years. On that front, I would certainly disagree with the contention in the senator's question. The Prime Minister is very well aware of the pressures that high electricity prices are causing, which is why she has indicated her intention to work through the COAG process to seek to deal with the driver of the largest component of electricity cost increases, which is infrastructure costs. In relation to agriculture, I would remind the senator that, of course, agriculture is excluded from the carbon price mechanism. In relation to—