Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I would draw Senator Roberts, in terms of the impacts of increasing power prices, to the preliminary report released on Monday this week by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on retail and electricity pricing, which demonstrates quite clearly that the largest component in household power bills and the largest source of increases in household power bills does, in fact, occur in the network costs, which, of course, this government took action on this week with the passage of legislation to change the way in which network market rules work, to help stop the gaming of the system.

The second-largest component relates to wholesale costs. The third-largest component relates to retail costs. It is in fact, in terms of environmental measures, the fourth contributor in energy costs. So the evidence is very clear. But, again, the approach of our government is to drive down costs at every single point, and we have been taking action to do so.