Campbell Newman unveils plan to cut power bill

THE Newman government has offered a re-election sweetener with a plan to cut $110 a year from the average household’s power bill.

THE Newman government has offered its first major re-election sweetener with a plan to reduce $110 a year from the average household power bill with the proposed privatisation of the state-owned electricity network.

In a move that will limit future hip-pocket offerings to voters, Premier Campbell Newman announced that $3.4 billion raised in asset sales and leases would be used to cover existing payments to solar users who sell their excess supply to the grid. Introduced by the former Labor Bligh government to encourage residential solar installation, homeowners are paid a mandated 44c per kilowatt hour — several times the market rate — which is then passed on to other consumers by electricity retailers.

Mr Newman said the $3.4bn would now cover the cost of the scheme, which runs to 2028, and ensure solar users still get their full feed-in tariff.

The $3.4bn will come from the estimated $37bn the government hopes to raise from the ­privatisation of the state electricity network — through sales and long-term leases — and other ­assets.

It will form the centrepiece of the Newman government’s bid for re-election.

“For an average household, they will see a cost reduction of $577 over a five-year period,” he said.

“It is fiscally responsible, it’s good public policy and it deals with a big problem we inherited.”

The plan leaves little room for the government to offer voters other campaign sweeteners, with $25bn of the $37bn to pay downstage debt and $8.6bn for infrastructure funds.

Labor’s Treasury spokesman, Curtis Pitt, said the new plan did not make economic sense. “At the same time as it exhausts the reported $3.4bn subsidy fund, the LNP will wave goodbye forever to annual income of $2bn from the ­assets it has earmarked for sale,” Mr Pitt said.

“That $2bn a year will be lost forever and over 30 years means taxpayers will lose $60bn — a figure that dwarfs the one-off $3.4bn subsidy fund.

“The Premier went to the 2012 election promising he had a ‘plan’ to cut power bills by $120 a year.

“All we have seen since is a net rise in average bills of $440 a year.’’