Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition has a pathological pattern of behaviour to deceive, to falsify and to mislead the Australian people.

We know that he has concocted this $1,000 figure, he has taken the good name of the Australian Energy Regulator and the Australian Energy Market Commission and he has got the Labor members opposite to repeat this false claim and to mislead the Australian people. On the issue of rising energy prices, the public concern is genuine, but the Leader of the Opposition's concern is not genuine. When we came to government at the end of 2013, we inherited a mess. We inherited electricity prices that had increased by more than 100 per cent, and they had actually increased by more than that in Sydney. We immediately took action to abolish the carbon tax, and those opposite tried three times to stop us. But when the carbon tax was abolished, we saw the biggest single drop ever recorded, and we have the ACCC saying that Australian householders were, overall, $550 better off.

When we came to government, as I said to the House yesterday, the Australian Energy Regulator in their State of the energy market report shows that electricity bills for an average household in Sydney have varied from increasing by about $1 to falling by $473 in accordance with the latest data in May. Take, for example, Ausgrid: in 2013, their customers saw a 3.9 per cent increase; in 2014, they saw a 5.5 per cent decrease; in 2015, they saw a 6.6 per cent decrease; and, in 2016, they saw a 9.1 per cent increase. We know that Australian households are doing it tough. On 1 July this year, AGL increased average Sydney household bills by $296, Origin increased bills by $310 and EnergyAustralia increased bills by $320. The combined effect of these changes on the average Sydney household bill, since we came to office, means that the price for an average Sydney household varies from increasing by $321 to decreasing by $177. This is nowhere even close to the Labor Party's claim: a fabrication of $1,000.

Mr Brian Mitchell interjecting—

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