Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby for her question. As someone with a family farming background, she knows how important affordable, reliable energy is to ensuring that small businesses can make ends meet, can invest and can employ. We are seeing report after report telling us that energy prices are coming down and that they have been coming down since well before the onset of the pandemic. The ACCC's latest gas inquiry found that gas prices offered for 2021, this year, have fallen by as much as 50 per cent over the last two years. A 50 per cent reduction. We know that lower gas prices are also helping to support the reduction in electricity prices. We have seen eight consecutive quarters of CPI reductions in electricity, and 10 consecutive quarters in the member for Boothby's electorate. A new report released by the AER confirms that wholesale electricity prices across the National Electricity Market were up to 58 per cent lower. They have fallen by 58 per cent since 2019.

With household prices making up a third to a half of a bill, those are big savings that can flow through to consumers. Now is a great time to shop around and get a good deal, and a great way to do that is to go to the Energy Made Easy website, where you can compare your bill with bills that could come from other plans and the savings that are up for grabs.

We also put in place several years ago our default market offer to make sure that reductions are passed on to consumers even when they don't have time to shop around. That means that, compared to before the introduction of the default market offer, a family in Clarence Park, in the member's electorate, could be now up to $707 a year better off. A cafe in Mitcham could be over $6,000 better off. This is all part of our plan to bring down energy prices. Over the longer term, we know that critical to doing this whilst we bring down emissions is technology.

Just last week, the Biden administration established a new advanced project research agency, allocating an initial $100 million towards technologies with stretch goals, including energy storage, low-cost clean hydrogen, carbon capture, low-emission steel and soil carbon. If that sounds familiar it's because they're the same five priority areas in our technology investment road map. We know that we need to be evaluating any technology that can bring down emissions and deliver affordable reliable energy for all Australians.

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