Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk to the people of Western Australia and my electorate of Swan about the carbon tax repeal legislation that has passed the parliament today. This delivers on a major commitment the coalition made to Australians at the last election.    Scrapping the carbon tax will make households, on average, around $550 better off next year alone.    The repeal of the carbon tax has been welcomed by WA Treasurer Mike Nahan, who has just put out a media statement saying that the repeal of the carbon tax is a win for all Western Australians—electricity bills for Synergy and Horizon power customers will decrease. Mr Nahan says:

The repeal of the Carbon Tax, to be backdated to July 1, will see electricity bills fall by about 8 per cent … a year, for an average West Australian family living within the South West Interconnected System (SWIS), depending on their total consumption.

The price of electricity for residential households in regional WA … is expected to fall by approximately 8 per cent …

That will be a welcome relief to many people who were fearing that the carbon tax repeal benefits would not be passed on through reduced electricity costs. I congratulate the Western Australian government on doing that. To the people at AMCA, in the refrigerant sector, they have worked closely with me and I know they have been waiting for this repeal to come through for a long time, as has the mining sector in Western Australia, which has been hamstrung by this job-costing carbon tax.