October 8, 2015
Federal Member for Flynn Ken O’Dowd has accused the Queensland Government of extracting a “secret tax” through rising electricity prices.
Mr O’Dowd said Ergon Energy was using its monopoly status to determine the price Queenslanders pay for electricity … “a situation which cannot last”.
“Ergon is a Queensland Government-owned enterprise that has a monopoly on electricity, so they can charge whatever they want and have in fact raised household electricity prices by 93 per cent since 2009,” he said.
He said Ergon’s annual report, released this week, showed the State Government had received $1.9 billion in dividends from Ergon Energy, which Mr O’Dowd said was proof the State Government had implemented a “secret tax”.
“This phenomenal extraction from Ergon’s dividends shows the Queensland Labor Government is taxing by stealth, and this approach will drive up electricity prices even further,” Mr O’Dowd said.
“It is bizarre that the State Government has also announced a review into how electricity prices can be lowered when they could do it themselves. It just makes no sense.”
Mr O’Dowd urged members of the public who were concerned about the cost of electricity to write to him so he could “advocate on behalf of the community for the State Government to rein in electricity prices”.
He can be contacted by email
Here’s another thing that makes no sense: if electricity prices rose by 93% between 2009 and 2015 as a form of “stealth tax”, why did the LNP do nothing about it between 2012 and 2015 when they held power?
The answer is probably that they used this money to prop up other State Government services like health, education, roads, ports, railways etc etc … just like the ALP. And if that’s true, then what Mr O’Dowd is really suggesting is that all we need to do to get cheaper power is to put the axe through these things.
Of course, our children may wind up pig-ignorant and die young through any number of easily preventable diseases; our roads may fall apart; and we may quickly turn into something resembling a 3rd world country. But – by crikey! – we’d have cheap power bills.
Perhaps now that he’s in Government, Mr O’Dowd might like to suggest to his Coalition colleagues that the Federal Government lead by example and axe its own health, education and defence spending so we can all have a much lower GST? After all, that’s a bit of a stealth tax too…