Page 4911 - Week 11 - Thursday, 21 October 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
I think it is simply dog-whistling of the worst kind that we see from the Liberal Party to imply that costs will never increase, which is the implicit argument that Mr Seselja tries to put. “Do it our way and there will never be a cost increase.” It is simply not true.
I wanted to pick up on the point that Mr Seselja was making about electricity price increases. He said that the ABS indicates that prices have increased by 45 per cent. He then verballed me when he said that I was disputing that figure. I do not dispute the ABS figure, although I do note that the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission in the ACT has indicated a figure of 40.7 per cent. Either way, it is still a substantial number. I do not dispute that, despite Mr Seselja’s verballing my earlier comments.
But it is interesting to reflect on what has driven those electricity price increases in that period. It is not some great climate conspiracy. It is not some great lefty conspiracy. No, let us actually look at some of the press releases by the ICRC on electricity price increases over the last four years because I think they are instructive. We will start with 2007 when regulated retail prices in the ACT were deemed to increase by 16.7 per cent by the ICRC. The commissioner said:
The price increase is driven by increases in the wholesale price of electricity which rose dramatically in April and remained high through the beginning of June.
He went on to say:
The current drought is impacting the availability of hydroelectric power from the Snowy system and water for cooling thermal base load generators in Queensland.
That would be coal-fired electricity. In 2008, electricity prices rose by 7.1 per cent on average from 1 July. The stated reason for that price increase, he said, was that in the eastern states electricity prices were still under the influence of the March shift in electricity generation costs, which peaked prices at up to 220 per cent higher than the historical average in July of 2007.
In 2009, the average price increase in the ACT was 6.42 per cent from 1 July 2009. The commissioner on this occasion said:
The increase in price is due mainly to an increase in distribution costs, although this has been partly offset by a reduction in the wholesale price of electricity.
In 2010, the commissioner announced an increase of 2.35 per cent in retail electricity prices for small customers to take effect from 1 July 2010. He said that this reflected a reduction in the wholesale price of electricity, combined with an increase in the transmission and distribution charges applicable to ACT customers.
And that is where we start to get to the nub of it. Anybody that has at least researched it knows that the substantial price increases in electricity in recent years have been driven by the need to invest in infrastructure. This reflects the neglect by governments
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video