The Australian reports:
ALWAYS keen to play the blame game, Kevin Rudd claims Labor’s climate change policies are not “the primary reason for the hike in electricity prices”; rather, the hike is due to “excessive rates of return for publicly owned transmission and distribution utilities which have become cash cows for various state and territory governments”. That is not just incorrect; it misleads the public about the cost of Rudd’s policies.
That is not the case for climate change policies, for it is impossible to slash carbon emissions without substantial, steadily rising costs. Yet Rudd has never flinched from the “far-reaching” emissions cuts he called for in 2007. Treasury’s carbon tax modelling spells out the price of those cuts: even on its optimistic assumptions, cutting domestic emissions reduces gross domestic product by $115 per tonne from now to 2020, with costs as high as $158 per tonne this year.
Little wonder then that in Queensland, Labor’s climate change policies already account for 20 per cent of the average household’s power bill.
So it’s 20 % of the bill in Queensland. Well, I live in Germany. Here it’s more than 50 % of the bill. You pay more than half of your electrical bill to the government in form of taxes, fees and whatever they call taxes tomorrow. Let alone this year the average price for electricity rose 12-13 % – only because of tax increases.