Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I genuinely thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question because it enables me to explain to him something that I explained to the Australian nation last year—that is, what are the real drivers of cost in electricity, including the extraordinary levels of investment we have seen in the poles and wires; including the market incentives that there are in the current system for the so-called gold-plating of the system that then feeds through to the prices that families and businesses pay.

Of course, we got the facts out on the table—and I know the facts are something the Leader of the Opposition never likes to hear about because they disturb his world outlook, but facts are facts and they deserve paying regard to. The facts of this, of course, were that well before our nation priced carbon, consumers had had to tolerate increases of more than 50 per cent in their electricity prices because of these other drivers of costs. So we have moved to address those other drivers of costs through a comprehensive reform process we engaged in through the Council of Australian Governments in the last six months of last year, and we did secure agreement at the COAG meeting at the end of last year to regulatory and other changes to put downward pressure on electricity pricing.

But of course the Leader of the Opposition does not want to refer to any of that because he does not want Australian families to know the truth about what is driving electricity prices, but that is the truth. And the Leader of the Opposition spent many weeks at the time of the greatest heat in that debate effectively defending Liberal state governments and saying on that area, which would make a real difference to the cost-of-living pressures experienced by households, that he would do absolutely nothing. On carbon pricing, as the Leader of the Opposition well knows, carbon pricing is working to reduce carbon pollution, it is working with our renewable energy target to reduce carbon pollution, and households have been assisted with the price rise that they saw in electricity, which was exactly as we predicted. None of the Leader of the Opposition's fear mongering in any of that came true.

So to the Leader of the Opposition, the questions are simple. Why does he want our nation to reduce carbon pollution in a more expensive way? Why doesn't he join with the government in effectively working to put downward pressure on electricity prices through the COAG reform agenda? And why is he insisting on doing things like ripping money out of the hands of families through ripping away basic benefits like the Schoolkids Bonus? That is what the Leader of the Opposition should answer.

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