Peter Dutton attacks Prime Minister three years after $275 power bill cut promise

Tuesday marks three years since Anthony Albanese promised Australians every household power bill would come down $275 by 2025. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has seized the opportunity to mark three years since Mr Albanese made the election promise. “And he didn’t just promise it once,” Mr Dutton said in a statement. “Labor promised you a $275 cut to your electricity bills 97 times before the last election.” This week, data revealed a record number of Australian households were on hardship payment plans for their power bills. Australian Energy Regulator figures show more than 130,000 households (1.9 per cent of customers) are on hardship payment plans as of June 30, up from the 1.4 per cent record a year ago. The data does not take into account the federal government $300 energy bill rebate because the payment kicked in on July 1, as did tax changes that lower income tax for middle and low income earners, while high income tax thresholds were also elevated. The AER figures show people getting on hardship payment schedules are coming onto the plans with higher levels of debt, but the average amount of debt held by people already on plans has shrunk by 4 per cent. Data from the regulator shows power prices spiked hard in late 2021 in line with inflation, but the spot prices have fallen considerably, up to 40 per cent, in each region of the national energy market – Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Snowy Mountain network. Mr Dutton’s office had the date of Mr Albanese’s $275 promise circled in the calendar and has attacked the government as an election looms within the coming seven months. “Labor’s ‘renewables-only’ policy is driving power prices up, and Australian households are paying the price,” Mr Dutton said. His office also provided a 17-page list of quotes from Mr Albanese and other Labor frontbenchers promising an average $275 drop in household power bills by 2025 as the MPs campaigned for the previous election. Offices of the Prime Minister and Treasurer pointed NewsWire to past comments the two cabinet ministers have made every time the $275 promise line has cropped up. The Energy Minister has also been approached for comment. The 2024 federal budget designated $3.5bn to extend and expand subsidies on electricity bills. The Treasurer said means testing the $300-per-house rebate would have taken more time and money. “So the judgment that we made was that the most efficient way to give cost-of-living relief to people on low and fixed incomes, but also people on middle incomes, to provide that cost-of-living relief in middle Australia as well, was to provide it to every household,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said at the time. Labor governments in Western Australia and Queensland also dished out respective $400 and $1000 bill rebates too. Government money kept a partial lid on power prices the year before too, helped by the weather. ACCC analysis shows the median household power bill across all regions grew by 14 per cent between September 2022 and September 2023. But a warm winter kept usage low, and electricity bills in the September 2023 quarter would have been 14 per cent higher without government rebates, the ACCC said.