Ah, the weather. It’s a great conversation starter and everyone has their own take on it. Some will tell you we’re coming out of a cold winter. Others will wonder whether we’ve actually had a ‘proper’ cold season.
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While the glorious past weekend suggests we have now turned the corner on winter and the days are getting longer, many of us are still in for shocks that could chill us to our cores. Those will come via our electricity and gas bills. This was the subject of my speech in Parliament last Thursday.
It came hot on the heels of news that energy provider and retailer AGL Energy announced that its underlying profit this financial year could exceed $1 billion.
Yes, you read that correctly. One billion dollars. The company’s electricity business is generating more earnings and its gas business is improving its margins. In other words, their prices are going up, and their gains are our losses.
Meanwhile, the average income in our electorate of Paterson is a massive 11 per cent behind the national average.
Let me stress here – AGL are not on their own. Things have gotten to such a sorry state that the prime minister was forced to summon electricity company chiefs to Canberra last week to give them a smack about their lack of transparency and habit of shifting customers to more expensive plans when their existing arrangements expire.
We’ve heard reports of pensioners going to bed at sundown for the guaranteed warmth of their blankets, rather than make the choice between heating or eating.
Clearly, rising energy costs are stretching some people’s budgets to breaking point. But it’s not just families in their homes seeking that basic human need – warmth – who are going to the wall here.
Analysts at Citi Group have confirmed rising energy costs will hit business profits hard, by as much as 14 per cent. Why is this happening?
Well, according to the experts – industry chiefs, the Treasurer and the Energy Minister – the driving force behind price hikes is the absence of national energy policy.
We have lost one in three renewable energy jobs since the Liberals formed government. Wholesale electricity prices have doubled and carbon pollution is once again rising.
I, along with my Labor colleagues and other Australians, am sick of waiting for this government to get its act together. They’ve had four years and done nothing.
We need the Turnbull Government to work with Labor to get electricity prices and carbon pollution under control. Until then, we’ll all pay the price.
