John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I want to take you back to the cost of electricity and ask you to explain some things to me. I believe that where a household earns less than $60,000 a year—I imagine that is a gross wage or is it a net wage?—it will receive a 120 per cent rebate on its electricity account. Could you explain the brackets—I believe the first is from zero to $60,000—and whether that is gross wage or net wage? Those electricity users get a 120 per cent rebate. I think the bracket above that is $60,000 to $100,000 and they get a 50 per cent rebate on their electricity bills. I want you to clarify for the chamber how a household income is defined. When we look at a household’s income, and take a typical example of a mum, a dad and perhaps their eldest son working, are those three incomes part of the household income or is it just the parents’ income? Another example might be a family with three children: mum is a part-time worker, dad is working, the eldest son might be an apprentice mechanic and the other two younger children might still be at school. Do you take the gross of the total household income to determine those brackets for the changes in rebates? And is it gross income or net income?