Senate debates
Thursday, 8 October 2020
Questions without Notice
Climate Change
2:28 pm
Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source
Respected economist Dr Alan Moran has compiled government data to show climate policies and renewables subsidies are costing Australians $13 billion extra in higher electricity costs per year, and that is $1,300 extra per household. Minister, is it fair and reasonable that the most vulnerable people in our society—the poor, the elderly, students, the unemployed—are paying 39 per cent of their electricity bills on a fanciful, pointless crusade to change global temperature? It is a highly regressive impost on these people.
Tibor Majlath
Posted on 12 Oct 2020 6:11 pm
During the years after privatisation of the electricity market my base rate per kilowatt hour as a residential electricity consumer rose from about 0.1186 cents in 2000 to 0.1709 cents in March 2010, a 44 per cent increase, or more than twice the claimed inflation rate of 2 per cent over 10 years. Similarly, the service charge rose from $33.96 to $48.12 per quarter over the same period, about a 42 per cent increase.
Yet Alan Moran wrote in The Age that prices actually fell with privatisation and have remained low …'' (14 April 2010). Now we are to believe that high energy prices are simply due only to climate policies and renewables subsidies based on an study by Moran which was actually commissioned by Senator Roberts.
The Senator asks whether it is fair and reasonable that the most vulnerable people in our society — the poor, the elderly, students, the unemployed—are paying 39 per cent of their electricity bills on a fanciful, pointless crusade to change global temperature? It is a highly regressive impost on these people.
So was privatisation of the electricity sector which was a major project of the IPA and Dr. Moran. Essential services should never have been privatised.