Dutton reveals Coalition plan to cut power prices
Households would receive a modest cut to gas and electricity bills under a Coalition plan to pump the market with gas to drive down energy costs.
The Coalition outlined a seven per cent fall in gas and a three per cent cut to electricity bills in the promised modelling into its national gas plan on Tuesday night, saying it would make companies keep gas in the Australian market.
Industrial customers are being promised a 15 per cent reduction in retail gas bills, with a forecast 8 per cent decrease in wholesale electricity prices.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton revealed the Coalition’s gas reservation policy in his budget reply speech last month. He has repeatedly attacked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for failing to achieve the promise that Labor would cut power bills for $275.
“Our policy will be a game-changer because we can then see the cost and, therefore, price of electricity, construction, food prices and many other goods start to come down,” he said.
“Gas is critical to our nation’s energy future.
“By making the gas companies put more of our Aussie gas into our market instead of exporting it, we will get the price of gas down by 15 per cent.”
Frontier Economics managing director Danny Price, who prepared the modelling, said the plan would decouple the domestic price from expensive international rates.
The forecast was published during the first leaders’ debate of the election campaign between Albanese and Dutton.
Albanese was declared the winner of the clash by a group of 100 undecided voters. But one in five still could not make up their mind following the event.
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Energy bills, healthcare and broader cost-of-living pressures were among the most pressing issues for the voters.
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie and her SA upper house candidate and former senator Rex Patrick have pledged if they are returned to parliament they will set up a “wide-ranging” inquiry into Australia’s relationship with the US.
This would include the ANZUS Treaty and the AUKUS partnership with the US and Britain, under which Australia has been promised nuclear-powered submarines.
“We need to ask the hard questions about how to manage relations with a great power that’s unpredictable, aggressively protectionist in trade policy, and self-interested in security relationships,” Lambie said.
“The US is putting America first – it’s time we put Australia first.”
