Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison government is lowering energy prices for hardworking Australians while not increasing taxes? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?

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

I thank the member for Moncrieff for her question. She, like all of us on this side of the House, is committed to affordable, reliable energy for her constituents. This is so important because affordable energy means that households have more money in their pockets to spend on other things. It also means that small businesses and energy-intensive industries are able to invest and grow jobs.

In the past 12 months we've been taking strong action. We've imposed price caps that are crucial for the most-vulnerable Australians. We're encouraging new supply into the market through the Underwriting New Generation Investments program and the Retailer Reliability Obligation. We're helping customers get the best possible deal through reference prices, and we are seeing results. For the past four consecutive quarters, for the first time since the CPI began, we have seen electricity price reduction—a total 3½ per cent reduction in retail prices.

It goes much further than that, because we have also seen, in the past three months, a 35 per cent reduction in both electricity and gas prices, through the toughest months of the year, compared with the same time last year—a 35 per cent reduction in wholesale prices: 30 per cent in Queensland, 50 per cent in South Australia, 38 per cent in Victoria and 42 per cent in Tasmania. Why is this so important? Wholesale prices make up a third of the bill for retail customers, for residential customers. They make up much more of the bill for small business and industry. They are all getting a break on their energy costs as a result of this government's actions. The job now is to make sure that those wholesale price reductions are passed through to customers and the big-stick legislation, which they opposed many times over, will be there to ensure that it happens.

But worse than that, at the last election, those opposite took to the Australian people economy-wrecking targets that would raise the price of electricity and raise the price of gas for all Australians. The Leader of the Opposition has now declared that those policies were a mistake. The member for Hindmarsh's policies were a mistake. They have no policies, no plans and no idea.