The great power price con

The great power price con

Chris Bowen and the Labor government promised Australians a $275 reduction in power bills.
Instead, electricity prices have skyrocketed by as much as $1,300 per household.

The latest Australian Energy Regulator (AER) draft pricing indicates that power bills will rise by another $200 per year from July (Herald Sun, March 13, 2025).

Labor’s answer to the cost-of-living crisis it has created is to borrow more money to hand back to households to make us feel good.

But it is la la land stuff.

Driving electricity prices up by pursuing net zero drives the cost of everything up.

Both sides of politics are responsible for this mess.

It was the Coalition under Scott Morrison which signed Australia up to net zero and despite the protestations of lone voices like Senator Matt Canavan, the majority of the Liberals and Nationals party rooms support net zero and staying in the Paris climate accords which are the source of our economic pain.

The fantasy that renewables would bring down power prices has been utterly debunked (The Australian, March 17, 2025). Instead, the mad rush to wind and solar has made electricity more expensive and less reliable. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been funnelled into subsidies propping up unreliable renewables, while families struggle to pay their bills (The Australian, March 17, 2025).

Labor and the Coalition’s obsession with net zero has forced the premature closure of coal-fired power stations, stripping the grid of reliable baseload power.
Meanwhile, the vast web of transmission lines needed to connect wind and solar farms to the grid is costing Australians billions—costs that are being passed directly onto consumers (The Daily Telegraph, March 15, 2025).

The so-called ‘cheapest pathway’ modelling used to justify this energy disaster was always a sleight of hand. These reports ignored the true cost of renewables—the backup storage, the massive land use, and the staggering taxpayer subsidies required to keep them viable (The Australian, March 17, 2025).

Now the truth is out: Labor’s energy policies are a disaster, and families are paying the price.

Family First is standing against this madness. At this election, we are fielding candidates who will fight to bring down power prices.

That means exiting the Paris Climate Agreement, abandoning net zero, and restoring common sense to our energy policy.

We need an energy mix that prioritises cheap, reliable power—coal, gas, and in the long term, nuclear.

Australians deserve affordable electricity, not empty promises and higher bills. It’s time to end the renewable rort and put families first.