James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week it was confirmed that South Australia topped the list on something, but it's not the sort of list you want to be on top of. A report from Energy Consumers Australia says that businesses in the state of South Australia, on average, have the highest electricity costs in the nation; the average bill is $8½ thousand. So of all the jurisdictions, we're the best when it comes to expensive electricity for businesses. What an absolute disgrace.

Unfortunately, that same report covered gas costs. Who had the highest increase? Well, my home state of South Australia topped the list once again, with a more than 22 per cent increase on the average gas bill for the average business in South Australia. It's an interesting figure, 22 per cent, because in Labor's budget last October they predicted gas prices would go up by 20 per cent over the next 12 months. Then they undertook that—apparently—emergency legislation to intervene in the gas market because they didn't want to see gas prices go up by 20 per cent. They were successful in that, because they went up by 22 per cent in the state of South Australia.

Businesses in my home state are paying the highest electricity prices and the highest gas prices under this government. What is their response? It's absolute crickets. All we're seeing is them saying that we should be grateful that prices aren't going up even further. Good luck selling that message to the average business in my home state of South Australia!