‘Just disgusting’: Jacqui Lambie says rich people who accept Labor’s energy rebate are welfare recipients
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie has slammed the Albanese government for “giving tax cuts to rich people”, saying anyone who takes the $150 energy rebate is a welfare recipient.
Federal Budget
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Independent senator Jacqui Lambie has slammed the Albanese government for “giving tax cuts to rich people”, saying anyone who takes the $150 energy rebate is a welfare recipient.
Senator Lambie made the comments on the ABC’s Insiders on Tuesday night, hours after Treasurer Jim Chalmers tabled the federal budget and announced all Australians would get the rebate regardless of their income.
“Giving rich people tax cuts is not a viable option and I don’t know how many times we need to tell them,” she said.
“Those billions of dollars that [Labor has] wasted on giving it to people like me, and there are millions of us out there who have got more than enough money, instead of putting that forward to people who need that more.”
She said the lack of means testing for the rebate was “just disgusting” and “lazy”.
“If you are one of those rich people, I want you to know that if you are taking that energy payment, you are now a welfare recipient,” she added.
Hours later, on Wednesday morning, she appeared on Sunrise and became emotional as she slammed the Coalition for it’s untargeted approach to energy rebates and tax cuts, along with its “negative, negative negative” proposal to cut to the public service.
Budget documents confirmed the average annual power bill is set to rise everywhere next financial year, to be as much as $849 higher than what Anthony Albanese pledged to deliver prior to the last election.
If Labor wins a second term, it will spend a further $1.8 billion of taxpayer funds to trim $150 from household and small business electricity expenses in the first half of 2025-26.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has left open the possibility that Labor may continue the rebate into the latter half.
But that’s far from guaranteed, and it’s worth noting that last year’s budget funded four quarterly $75 subsidies across 2024-25 – not just two, as is the case this time.
Dr Chalmers said the government’s previous “rounds of energy rebates have helped take some of the sting out of energy costs.”
The budget papers disclose the true extent to which federal and state government subsidies are masking the skyrocketing cost of switching on the lights.
Without these rebates, nationally, “electricity bills would have been, on average, around 45 per cent higher in the December quarter 2024,” one of the documents says.
After factoring in new $150 rebate — as well as the end of any state discounts, along with the impact of rising network, retail and wholesale energy costs — analysis by this masthead using regulated prices reveals that next financial year, households face paying an average of $328 more in NSW, $162 extra in Victoria, an additional $264 in South Australia and a whopping $1287 more in Queensland where a local subsidy of $1000 has been received this financial year.
Unsurprisingly, the budget papers do not mention Mr Albanese’s pledge, made in December 2021, to lop $275 a year from household power bills by 2025 by boosting renewable energy supply.
When compared to the savings Mr Albanese touted before the May 2022 poll, consumers are going to be up for $849 extra in NSW, an additional $416 in Victoria and $753 in SA.
In Queensland, the difference between the promise and reality is $937 — and the end of the $1000 subsidy has no bearing on that, because it didn’t exist in 2021-22 and won’t be in place next financial year either.
Reputex policy modelling commissioned by the ALP in 2021 said the bill savings would come from lowering wholesale electricity prices by 18 per cent or $11 per megawatt hour (MWh) by 2025.
But the opposite has happened.
In 2021, across the National Electricity Market (NEM), wholesale prices averaged from a low of $45/MWh in SA to a high of $65/MWh in NSW.
So far in 2025, the state with the lowest average is Victoria, at $70/MWh while NSW has the highest at $119/MWh, according to data from the Australian Energy Market Operator.
Wholesale prices have not fallen anywhere in the NEM.
It is a major reason average annual regulated electricity bills have kept on rising instead of declining as Mr Albanese vowed.
In 2021-22, the average annual regulated price of electricity was $1636 in NSW, $1376 in Victoria, $1373 in Queensland and $1716 in SA, according to official data.
Based on Labor’s 2021 promise to reduce bills by $275, those charges should have fallen to $1361 in NSW, $1101 in Victoria, $1098 in Queensland and $1441 in SA.
Instead, in 2025-26, the average regulated bill is set to be $2360 in NSW, $1667 in Victoria, $2185 in Queensland $2185 and $2344 in South Australia. That’s before apply the $150 rebate announced this week.
This masthead’s analysis uses averages of prices from the Australian Energy Regulator, Victoria’s Essential Services Commission and the Queensland Competition Authority.
These regulated rates are paid by a minority of households, but official data on the market prices paid by the majority also show there have been big increases since the time of Mr Albanese’s pledge.
In NSW, median market prices have surged by 31 to 47 per cent compared to December 2021, depending on location. In Victoria, median market prices are up by 11 to 24 per cent.
In Queensland, median market prices have risen by 48 to 51 per cent. In SA, the median market price is 37 per cent higher than in December 2021.
These increases are before rebates.
This is the third federal budget in a row to feature large energy rebates. In the 2023-24 Budget, the Albanese government outlaid $1.5bn to cut $250 a year from power bills for about five million low- and middle-income households. In most areas, this was matched by state governments, bringing rebates to $500.
Last year, Labor spent a further $3.5bn to knock $300 off all household electricity bills.
The Opposition has indicated it won’t “stand in the way” of the new $150 rebate.
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