Electricity Prices

KAP wants a range of measures that would provide immediate energy price relief.

High energy prices are crippling businesses and hurting families. Building more power stations is all well and good – but this will take many years, and we need immediate relief from high prices.

Immediate measures to reduce electricity prices would be:

• Banning the Optimised Replacement Cost valuation methodology used by Powerlink, Ergon and Energex to save customers $500 million to $1 billion per annum, and permanently put downward pressure on prices;
• Remove the Competitive Neutrality Fee, estimated to permanently reduce prices by at least 10 per cent;
• Remove the unnecessary margins applied by Ergon to the calculation of regulated prices. This will result in an immediate five per cent price reduction for residential and business customers;
• Put an indefinite freeze on the escalation of transitional tariffs used in irrigation to maintain the competitiveness of our agricultural industry.

These measures will immediately reduce electricity prices and give households and businesses choice where they buy their electricity.

Gas Supply

Queensland gas should be supplied to Queensland first.

Globally competitive energy costs have been one of the biggest drivers of our export industries.

Over the past 15 years, we’ve seen this competitive advantage disappear as Labor and LNP governments have driven energy prices up.

Both manufacturing and minerals processing have declined. Rising energy costs have also hit primary producers hard.

KAP wants to pursue policies that minimise energy costs for households and businesses and restore our competitive advantage.

KAP wants new legislation to establish an automatic Australian Market Supply Condition on any new gas production in Queensland. This will require all new Queensland gas to be supplied to domestic end users unless it can be shown that exporting the gas will provide a greater contribution to the domestic economy. Contribution to the domestic economy is to be measured by long term job creation (either directly or in secondary industries which rely heavily on gas as an input) and economic value created in secondary industries.

Isolated Solar Power Scheme

KAP wants to help for primary producers install solar pumps.

It may be a shock to city people, that not everyone in Queensland is connected to the electricity grid.

Many properties in rural Queensland rely on diesel to run generators to run their homes and farms.

This is expensive and is why KAP wants to introduce a scheme for grants and subsidised loans for primary producers to install solar pumps for irrigation and stock watering, as well as rooftop solar for homes and workshops. This initiative will be targeted at properties not currently connected to the electricity grid, to offset the high cost of diesel.