On to the questions.

Jim Chalmers is asked if he can guarantee that the ‘top up’ tax cuts won’t be eaten up by increases in energy bills next year.

Chalmers:

I will assure people that we are doing everything we can to put downward pressure on electricity prices and that takes a number of forms. In the near term, extending energy bill relief is about taking some of the sting out of the electricity bills. That was an important part of the relief in the Budget last night. We know from the first two rounds that that has been helpful and meaningful. It’s been effective in limiting increases to power bills. Better than that – in the official CPI last year, the year to December 2024, electricity prices came down about 25%, largely, but not entirely, because of our rebates and in the near term, rebates have an important role to play.

In the medium and longer term, we are adding more cleaner and cheaper, more reliable sources of energy to the grid and over time, that will put downward pressure on prices as well. We know from AEMO and the experts that one of the reasons we’ve had this upward pressure is not the new parts of the system, not the cleaner, cheaper, more re liable parts of the system, but the legacy parts that are becoming less reliable over time. We’re doing those two things at once.

We know electricity bills are part of the cost-of-living pressure people have felt over the last four or five years. There’s good reason for, that international reasons in particular. But we’re doing what we can in the near term and in the longer term simultaneously.