Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chifley for the question because there are some important issues traversed there. I will take them sequentially. It is very important to note that 8.9 per cent, as I recall, of the electricity price rise approved by IPART in New South Wales is attributable to the introduction of a carbon price. That equates to an average household cost of $3.30 a week—exactly what the government said it would be. And of course, with respect to that, the federal government is providing an average of $10.10 per week to households in New South Wales in assistance in the form of tax cuts, family tax benefit improvements and pension increases. In Western Sydney, where I had the privilege to grow up—in fact, in the electorate of the member for Chifley, an excellent representative for that area—this is very important for people. There are many people in New South Wales, in Western Sydney, doing it tough. The tax cuts, the pension increases, the family tax benefits, the help for self-funded retirees, for many veterans and many others are very, very important to them. The federal government is the only government that is helping in these circumstances.

As to the rest of the electricity price rise approved by IPART, there are very significant factors that are within the New South Wales government jurisdiction to deal with. They are providing no assistance. The federal coalition have banged on for the last 12 or 18 months about all the doom and gloom, the fear and the terror that is created by carbon pricing. Do you know, the investment in poles and wires in New South Wales equates to the price impact of carbon pricing coming in, as it does in other jurisdictions—and, not only that, it has been more in previous years. Yet they have been claiming doom and gloom for everything with respect to that, when in fact the federal government is providing $10.10 a week, on average, in assistance. The New South Wales government is not helping people. It is not even actively looking at how it can ensure that there is no gold-plating of these investments, which are going on within its jurisdiction, so that New South Wales Electricity consumers are not placed under even greater pressure. That is a very material factor. It is total hypocrisy for the O'Farrell government to try to attribute the totality of the price rise to the carbon price as the member for Flinders was trying to do in his first question. It is completely fallacious and factually untrue. The New South Wales government is not providing assistance to help people in the way the federal government is.

The other thing that IPART did in recent weeks was to examine in a thorough way the potential price impact of carbon pricing on councils and their costs. There is a very thorough breakdown published on IPART's website which demonstrates very clearly that we are talking about an increase in the range of 0.4 per cent to 0.6 per cent in local government costs in New South Wales—I do not have the material before me, but it certainly was not more than 0.6 per cent. Fortunately, in that jurisdiction IPART keeps a pretty close eye on what the councils can do, along with the state government. Those are the facts of the matter.

I was in Brisbane last week. The Brisbane City Council, which is, of course, under Liberal National Party control, has come up with a completely fallacious claim. Given the same circumstances, they will be putting rates up by 1.9 per cent and ripping people off and having no transparency and accountability about it. These are all material factors.

The member for Chifley is right to point to the importance of programs generally that will assist organisations such as manufacturing businesses and local governments to reduce their energy consumption. Of course, some of the revenue from the carbon price mechanism is dedicated to programs which will assist in this. Last week the government announced a number of recipients among local governments and not-for-profit organisations of energy efficiency grants which will see energy consumption and electricity bills reduced. Last week I visited a food manufacturing facility at Emu Plains called Crafty Chef. A co-contribution by the government is expected to reduce the carbon emissions intensity of Crafty Chef by 54 per cent, deliver CO2 savings, boost its turnover from $20 million to $50 million and increase jobs.

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