High Power Bills Aren’t a Bug—They’re the Business Model
Every month, Australians are hit with another energy bill that looks more like a punishment than a charge for service. You use less, but pay more. You switch off the lights, unplug appliances, cut back on comfort - and still, you fall further behind.
This isn’t bad luck or poor planning. It’s design. The Australian energy system is built not to serve households, but to extract from them.
Fossil Fuels: High Prices by Political Design
Why are your bills rising? Simple. Because coal and gas are still at the center of our power grid, not because of necessity, but because of obedience - to corporate donors, fossil fuel lobbies, and the politicians who serve them.
Labor has approved over 25 new coal and gas projects since taking office. At the same time, they hand out $11 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel corporations - while telling families they can’t afford a proper heater in winter.
Peter Dutton’s answer? Fantasyland nuclear plants, decades away and hundreds of billions over budget. In reality, it’s a stalling tactic, engineered to protect the fossil fuel status quo while deflecting from solutions that already exist.
Meanwhile, households pay the price. The economy of fossil fuels is volatile by nature. Prices are determined not by what we need but by what markets and monopolies demand. And Australia, one of the most sun-drenched nations on Earth, remains tethered to 19th-century fuels because both major parties have decided that profit for a few trumps affordability for all.
Labor and the Liberals: Two Faces of Corporate Capture
What unites both Labor and the Liberals is their refusal to sever ties with the industries driving up costs and driving the climate crisis. The public picks up the tab - through bills, subsidies, and disaster recovery. Fossil fuel corporations keep the profits. That’s not oversight. That’s collusion.
The Greens: Disrupting the Energy Cartel
The Greens are the only force willing to name the enemy: an energy system run by profiteers, propped up by politicians, and insulated by media silence.
Their plan?
- Direct investment in household and community energy - solar panels, batteries, and efficiency upgrades that actually reduce bills and give people energy independence.
- Electrification grants and loans - not as charity, but as a public right to live in homes that aren’t energy traps.
- Expansion of publicly owned renewable energy - not to enrich shareholders, but to return profits to communities.
- A Climate Response Service - paid for by ending fossil fuel subsidies - to prepare for and recover from climate-driven disasters.
- Making fossil fuel corporations pay for the damage they cause - through levies that fund recovery, not dividends.
- Coordinating with states to cut insurance costs, enforce resilient building codes, and stop price-gouging.
In short: clean energy, in public hands, with the costs and benefits shared fairly. It’s not radical. It’s what a functioning democracy would do if it wasn’t compromised by fossil capital.
Energy Is a Right, Not a Commodity
When pensioners sit in the dark to save money, when renters pay outrageous bills for drafty, uninsulated homes, while CEOs of fossil fuel companies post record profits - this is not a policy failure. It is a moral failure. And a political one.
The idea that the market will solve this crisis is a myth maintained for the benefit of the few. What’s needed isn’t more competition - it’s confrontation.
This Election: Break the Cycle
Labor props up fossil fuels. The Liberals offer nuclear distractions and climate denial. Only the Greens are fighting to dismantle the energy racket and deliver clean, affordable power for all.
Vote to make energy efficient, clean, and public.
Vote to tax fossil fuel giants and fund real climate resilience.
Vote to end corporate control over your power bill - and your future.
Because the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis are not separate battles. They have the same culprits. And it’s time we stopped paying them.
No comments:
Post a Comment