Anthony Albanese’s huge bill that every Aussie faces before Christmas

Anthony Albanese has been accused of giving Australian families false hope that their utility bills will be cut by hundreds of dollars a year as the cost of living increases.

The prime minister led Labor to an election victory in May with a pledge to cut energy bills by $275 a year within three years.

But that would be hard to achieve as inflation climbs to 32 years, wholesale electricity prices triple in just a year, and gasoline prices jumped back above $2 a liter within weeks.

Average utility bills have risen $300 since April, the competition regulator has revealed.

No wonder Australians are nervous about NAB’s consumer confidence survey for September, which shows consumers gearing up to spend an extra $170 per week on groceries and utility bills.

With 100 days to Christmas, that adds up to an additional $2,040 — as economists are tipping at least another rate hike from the Reserve Bank by the end of the year.

Scroll down for audio

Australians are nervous about NAB’s consumer confidence survey for September, which shows that consumers are preparing to spend an additional $170 per week on groceries and utility bills. With 100 days until Christmas, that adds up to an additional $2,040 — as economists are tipping at least another rate hike from the Reserve Bank by the end of the year.

Sydney radio 2GB afternoon presenter Jim Wilson accused Mr Albanese and his government of making outlandish election promises that were sure to go unfulfilled.

“There is no doubt that electricity prices would also rise under a coalition government,” Wilson told listeners on Wednesday.

But Labor went into the election with a rock-solid pledge to cut energy bills by $275 a year by 2025.

“If you make a promise, you keep it.”

Average electricity bills have risen $300 since April, or 25 percent for a middle-income home, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb told a parliamentary hearing in Canberra on Wednesday.

Wilson acknowledged that some factors were beyond the government’s control, such as the wild weather and flooding on the east coast, which have pushed up food prices, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has made crude oil more expensive.

Inflation in the year to July rose 7 percent – the fastest pace since 1990 – and the Reserve Bank of Australia expects it to hit a new 32-year high of 7.75 percent in 2022.

The Big Four banks are all expecting another RBA rate hike by the end of the year, with spot rates already at a nine-year high of 2.6 percent, following six consecutive monthly rate hikes.

Borrowers haven’t endured so much pain in a short space of time since 1994.

While inflation eased to 6.8 percent in August, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed an annual increase in fruit and vegetable prices of 18.6 percent following flooding in southeastern Queensland, where many crops are grown.

Gasoline prices rose at an annual rate of 15 percent, despite a six-month fuel tax halving to 22.1 cents per liter, which ended late last month.

The average price of unleaded gasoline this week is $1.80 in most capital cities.

But Craig James, chief economist at CommSec, said the end of the discount cycle in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in the coming weeks would push pump prices back above $2 a liter, where they were in March before the previous coalition government cut fuel taxes in half.

“The cycle will end in the next two weeks with the risk that prices could rise to $2.15 a liter,” he said.

NAB’s consumer survey found that consumers now expected to spend an extra $35 per week on gasoline, compared to $59 more on food and groceries.

Rather than go down, Alinta Energy chief executive Jeff Dimery expects energy bills to rise 35 percent by 2023, noting that replacing coal-fired power plants with renewables was expensive.

The wholesale price of electricity in the national electricity market, which makes up a third of the electricity bill, reached a record average of $264 per megawatt hour in June 2022.

This was more than double the previous record $130 per megawatt hour in the March quarter of 2019, data from the Australian Energy Market Operator shows.

In just a year, the spot wholesale price has more than tripled from $85 per megawatt hour.

A Finder analysis for October showed that a family with three children now paid an average of $440 per quarter or $1,760 per year.

Wilson said that despite rising costs, Labor still suggested it could tackle livelihood pressures.

“I saw an election poster today on the way to the studio where Labor was screaming they would save you money on your electricity bill,” he said.

“If I were Anthony Albanian, I’d want those posters removed immediately.

Seriously, who the hell thought it was a good idea to make such a bizarre promise?

‘Frankly, Prime Minister, you should never have made such a commitment, it is false hope.

“Of course this transition to renewable energy looks great in a PowerPoint presentation, but it lacked any kind of thinking and to be honest, it lacked honesty.”

Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has suggested renewable energy is cheaper, with the Labor government last month setting a 43 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030, with support from the Greens.

But Wilson argued that in the short term this would do little to lower energy bills.

“Chris Bowen is standing there and patting his chest about how spending billions of dollars on renewable energy will save us money,” he said.

“It might save us money in 30 years, but the costs won’t come down anytime soon.

‘On the one hand they promise to lower your bill, but on the other hand they are committed to massively increasing renewable energy sources.’

Treasurer Jim Chalmers tried to downplay expectations that electricity prices will fall and warned that rising electricity prices mean high inflation for an extended period of time.

“I think one of the reasons why this inflation is going on for longer than we’d like is that there are expectations that these increases in electricity prices will be problematic for longer,” said Dr. Chalmers Tuesday to ABC Radio National.

“If you think about our inflation problem in the next six or nine months, our expectation is that a bigger part of that will be electricity prices.”

Bowen said building more transmission networks to distribute more renewable energy would lower energy bills.

“They are the cheapest form of energy, as our market operator says, by a country mile, and more renewable energy means energy prices are lower than they would otherwise be,” he told the 7:30 p.m. ABC program Tuesday night.

“The more renewable energy you have in the system, the lower the energy prices will be,” Bowen said.

“The fact is, you need government policies to encourage renewable energy, and that’s why we’re committed to reaching 82 percent renewable energy by 2030.”