Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
Calls for a national energy summit to address soaring energy costs are increasing after the budget predicted consumer prices would soar by 56 per cent.
Joel Gibson from the consumer network OneBigSwitch said the energy price crisis should now be the government’s top priority if Australia was to avoid similar scenes to the UK, where 40 retailers had gone bust and price caps had doubled.
“The budget was an opportunity to address the biggest cost of living crisis we face right now – energy bills – but the government has elected to kick the can down the road,” Mr Gibson said.
“We now need a national summit to deal with this issue. Business as usual won’t cut it. If we don’t ring the bell now, we’ll have millions of Aussies who can’t afford to turn the lights on.”
While the NGO sector generally welcomed Budget measures in areas such as child care, aged care and housing, there were strong concerns about the day-to-day cost of living increases. Besides the predictions of soaring energy prices, the Budget also pointed to likely increases in the cost of food and vegetables because of October floods in eastern Australia.
Mission Australia’s CEO Sharon Callister said: “As cost of living and housing pressures go through the roof, people who rely on income support are unable to pay for many of the essentials of life.”
Opposition Treasury spokesperson Angus Taylor slammed the government over rising cost of living pressures.
“The Budget confirms that electricity and gas prices are expected to rise sharply over the next two years. Treasury has assumed retail electricity prices will increase by 50 per cent. Retail gas prices are up some 40 per cent in 2022 and 2023,” he said. “Despite Labor’s pre-election promise to reduce your power prices by $275 a year, their own budget papers contradict this claim, and the Government has no plan to address rising prices.”
The price hike amounts to a 56 per cent rise over two years due to the increase compounding each year.
Greenpeace Australia said the government could have assisted average Australians with their electricity bills by imposing windfall taxes on energy companies.
“This was billed as a ‘cost of living’ Budget, but Labor has missed a crucial opportunity to help Australians feeling the squeeze on energy bills by failing to introduce a windfall tax on gas export mega-profits,” campaigner Richard George said.
The cost of living crisis is expected to peak in December, but grim Treasury modelling suggested the hip pocket pain could last longer than initially expected as extreme weather events, the war in Ukraine and the global outlook continue to cause economic pain.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers warned there would be “hard days to come” as he handed down his first budget on Tuesday. The budget said those tough times will include a major increase in energy prices.
By the end of the year, Treasury estimates retail electricity prices will increase by 20 per cent nationally.
In 2023-24, that figure will blow out to 30 per cent. Retail gas prices are also estimated to increase by up to 20 per cent in both 2022-23 and 2023-2024.
The budget said electricity prices were expected to directly contribute between 0.75 and 1 percentage point to inflation in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
