Labor pledged 100 times before the 2022 election that the people of the Wimmera and Northern Grampians, and their fellow Australians, would see a reduction of $275 on their power bill by 2025.

On March 19, the Victorian Essential Services Commission, ESC, announced falls of an average of $112 for Victorian households – however that reduction needed to exceed $1200 to match Labor’s $275 election pledge when you factor in subsequent power price rises on Labor’s watch.

It’s not Labor’s first broken promise, and it won’t be the last.

Labor reneged on its promise to retain stage- three tax cuts in full and has been unable to deliver 24-hour, seven-days-a-week registered nurses in aged care. 

Now Labor’s signature energy promise is in tatters and it is on the cusp of breaking its pledge to lift funding to councils.

Labor continues to railroad costly and unwanted transmission lines and wind projects through regional areas including 400 kilometres of transmission towers through Mallee for the VNI West project. 

The ESC’s latest market offer cited a six percent increase in network costs including transmission lines, and given that our bills include 40 percent of infrastructure, electricity prices will not be going down anytime soon.

Rather than focus on the cost of living, a distracted Albanese Labor government has been laser-focussed on appeasing unions via heavy handed industrial relations laws, spending half a billion dollars on a failed referendum and compromising prime agricultural land for transmission poles and wires.

The Australian Energy Regulator revealed about 116,753 Australians had been placed into hardship due to skyrocketing energy bill – a 59 percent increase since Labor came to government. 

And, 192,459 Australians are now in energy debt. 

Labor’s renewables-only obsession is also pushing 500 families a week into energy poverty.

The Coalition has consistently focused on cost of living and holding Labor to account. 

The Coalition will be releasing policies to ease the cost-of-living pressures as the election looms and for Wimmera and Northern Grampians residents and their fellow Australians who are doing it tough right now, an election cannot come soon enough.

The entire April 3, 2024 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!