Courier Mail – Our three-point plan to beat affordability crisis

I was at an Ettamogah pub recently near Ballarat. They have a sign up behind the bar which reads “free beer tomorrow”. I could not think of a better analogy for Labor’s energy policies. They keep promising that cheaper energy will come, tomorrow. It just always is tomorrow. The problem is that power bills don’t lie. The average family’s electricity bill has gone up around $1000 per family under Labor. And, all together, Australians have paid $23 billion more on energy under Labor. These higher energy costs also sneak through into the high cost of everything too. Businesses use about four times the amount of power that households do. Everything that is made, shipped and refrigerated, requires energy. So when energy costs go up, so does the cost of what is in your shopping trolley. All of this is becoming so self-evident that even Labor seems on the verge of taking down the “free beer tomorrow” sign. Labor has delivered four Budgets now and in each of them, before this last one, they had promised to lower the cost of electricity for Australians. Now, not a single word. Labor is waving the white flag on energy for Australians. The cost-of-living crisis is the most important problem facing Australian families today. Yet, Labor no longer h l dl even has a plan to reduce living costs. This is not good enough. As Leader of The Nationals, I will never wave the white flag. I will never surrender. We have an amazing country and there is no reason why we shouldn’t have the lowest power prices in the world. Before the net zero madness, we had some of the lowest power prices in the world. We can have it again, if we end net zero once and for all and get back to using some common sense. There are three things we must do to lower living costs. First, we need to use all of our resources to create cheaper energy. We need to use our coal, gas, uranium and renewables resources. Not lock some up at the expense of others. To do this we need to scrap net zero, so that we do not place unnecessary costs and taxes on energy production. We should be supporting the efforts of the Queensland Government to find and develop new sources of Australian oil too. We have got the largest uranium reserves in the world. Why aren’t we using it too? The second thing we need to do is lower taxes. The Coalition will offer a tax back guarantee, ensuring that when inflation occurs, Australians get their own money back. For too long, Canberra has funded itself through the silent tax of inflation as people are pushing into higher tax brackets. We will increase tax thresholds with inflation, so this does not happen anymore. For the average Australian today this would mean $400 of tax back with this year’s inflation rate. The third thing we need to do is reduce our migration intake, so that young Australians have a chance to buy a home. Not by destroying the economy and taxing people more, but by matching the number of new migrants with new homes. That is why our plan is to match migration intake with the number of houses we build, to put Australians first in our migration policy settings. This is a plan to restore prosperity to Australia. Cheaper power, lower taxes and fewer migrants. Instead, Labor does not have a plan to restore economic prosperity. Labor’s plan is to maintain the status quo of a high taxing, high spending and high immigration government that has got us into this mess in the first place. Australia needs a change, but not with more promises of free beer tomorrow. Without change our economic hangover will continue. We have a great country with enormous potential. If we use it for the benefit of Australians again, we can make Australian beer, and a pub meal affordable again too.