❓ A parliamentary question regarding electricity tariff increases, attributing them to government expenses or lack of care. The Treasurer refutes this, citing rising fuel, construction, and renewable energy certificate costs, while highlighting government efforts to control expenditure.
AnsweredQoN 152Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
ELECTRICITY TARIFF INCREASES
I have a supplementary question. Is it the government’s expenses growth of $4.5 billion—that is over 25 per cent in just two years—that has prevented it from keeping electricity costs down or does the government simply not care about families and pensioners? Mr C.C. PORTER
I have a supplementary question. Is it the government’s expenses growth of $4.5 billion—that is over 25 per cent in just two years—that has prevented it from keeping electricity costs down or does the government simply not care about families and pensioners? Mr C.C. PORTER
AnswerView source ↗
Rising electricity costs have nothing to do with the level of recurrent expenditure growth; they are totally unrelated. Mr E.S. Ripper interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, Leader of the Opposition! Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
Mr C.C. PORTER replied: Rising electricity costs have nothing to do with the level of recurrent expenditure growth; they are totally unrelated. Mr E.S. Ripper interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, Leader of the Opposition! Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
Rising electricity costs have nothing to do with the level of recurrent expenditure growth; they are totally unrelated. Mr E.S. Ripper interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, Leader of the Opposition! Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
Mr E.S. Ripper interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, Leader of the Opposition! Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
The SPEAKER : Order, Leader of the Opposition! Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
Mr C.C. PORTER replied: Rising electricity costs have nothing to do with the level of recurrent expenditure growth; they are totally unrelated. Mr E.S. Ripper interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, Leader of the Opposition! Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
Rising electricity costs have nothing to do with the level of recurrent expenditure growth; they are totally unrelated. Mr E.S. Ripper interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, Leader of the Opposition! Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
Mr E.S. Ripper interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, Leader of the Opposition! Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
The SPEAKER : Order, Leader of the Opposition! Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
Mr C.C. PORTER : I put the question of why electricity costs were increasing to all the utilities when I assembled them for a briefing. They asked me whether I wanted an answer to that in a nutshell, and I said I did. They said that the reason the cost of electricity production, generation and delivery is increasing, in a nutshell, is everything: it is the cost of fuel, the cost of construction and particularly the cost of purchasing renewable energy certificates, which the commonwealth government requires us as a state and our state utilities to do. These things all feed into the cost of generating power, which is rapidly escalating. This government has reduced recurrent expenditure growth compared to the levels it inherited—not as much as I would like, but it is still a considerable and decent effort. This government has also stabilised recurrent expenditure growth for public sector wages at a level far improved upon the situation under the former Labor government. That gives the government the flexibility to ensure that next year’s budget will not have to do what was anticipated, because we have shown some discipline in recurrent expenditure growth. Had we inherited, as we did, $4.7 billion and kept it going, our ability to manoeuvre and give the Western Australian public some respite from electricity cost increases would be minimal. If the Labor Party were in government, it would have had no choice whatsoever.
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