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

I thank Senator Duniam for his question and for his strong commitment to ensuring the most affordable energy is available to Australian households and consumers whilst being reliable and as low-emission as possible. I'm thrilled to inform the Senate that on Friday the COAG Energy Council agreed to the next steps of implementation of the Turnbull government's National Energy Guarantee. As the modelling that was tabled from the Energy Security Board to the COAG Energy Council demonstrates, this is about delivering a policy that will drive prices down compared to what they would be and drive reliability up—and will do so in the lowest emissions way possible. This is, in many ways, the holy trinity of energy policy: improved reliability, improved affordability and lower emissions. That's what the National Energy Guarantee is delivering.

The Labor Party called for modelling when the policy was released, and modelling has been undertaken by Frontier Economics, the same people the Labor Party federally and in South Australia have been happy to use and rely upon. So I trust, having been happy to rely upon those modellers in the past, they are happy to accept the findings of those modellers today. Those findings make clear that wholesale energy prices will fall by an average of 23 per cent and as much as 30 per cent under this policy setting. Household bills will be some $400 a year lower compared with today, with $120 in savings coming from the National Energy Guarantee. The impact for businesses will be particularly profound. Small businesses, such as cafes, could save hundreds of dollars a year. Medium-sized businesses, such as supermarkets, could save an estimated $400,000 a year. Large energy-intensive manufacturers could save millions of dollars. (Time expired)