Low Cost, Reliable Electricity

Consecutive Labor and Liberal governments have delivered an incoherent energy policy that has driven up prices and left Australians struggling to keep the lights on.

The obsession with renewable energy has cost Australians dearly and is unlikely change global temperatures in the least.

The Liberal Democrats favor removing GST from electricity, ditching subsidies for renewables, and letting competition find the lowest price.

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Electricity Myth #1 - Privatisation Causes Higher Prices

Many unscrupulous politicians blame privatisation for high prices. However, the facts aren't on their side.

Each state privatised their electricity sectors at different times with some states privatising as early as 1990. Price hikes all happened at the same time between 2008 and 2013.

Privatisation generally lowers prices because firms have to compete for business. If a firm offers expensive prices and poor service customers will change providers.

Electricity Myth #2 - Renewable energy is the cheapest energy source

Some news organisations have disingenuously published analyses that show wind energy is cheaper than non-renewable sources. We wish this were true but it isn't. Here's why.

These analyses do use market prices, but the market price for renewables carries an $80 subsidy which is paid for by electricity consumers.

Subsidies aren't the only government given advantage renewables benefit from, but if renewables were actually cheaper than coal, they wouldn't need any government given advantages.

Electricity Myth #3 - Renewables need subsidies because coal has subsidies.

When green energy advocates learn how much support renewables get from the government they generally fall back on supposed coal subsidies to explain why renewables struggle to compete.

Firstly, if coal subsidies are the problem, the solution should be to remove them. Adding a new subsidy to combat an old subsidy is a waste of other people's money.

More importantly, you have to draw a very long bow to claim coal is subsidised. Fuel tax exemptions, for example, are avaliable to all businesses including renewable energy companies. Coal has no advantage over wind or solar as a result. Most claims that coal is subsidised follow this pattern.

Electricity Myth #4 - Australia can control the world's climate.

About 1.3% of total global CO2 emissions come from Australia, or around 500 MT of CO2.

China alone increased it's annual emissions from 4,785MT to 11,543MT between 2000 to 2015. In other words, China has increased it's emissions by Australia's total emissions every year for over a decade.

Cutting Australia's energy sector emissions by 50% will do nothing to abate climate change and will push tens-of-thousands of Australians into energy poverty.

Signing here lets us know this is an issue you care about. With your support we can make a change.

The Liberal Democrats are committed to lower energy prices.

We recognise that, even when you accept the entirety of the climate change argument, Australia cannot control the enormous and increasing emissions of other countries.

We support a technology neutral energy policy. We don't mind how electricity is generated, so long as it's cheap and reliable.

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