Only 21% of voters polled believe that the carbon price had a large impact on power prices and just 9% thought the repeal had pushed prices down

More than 60% of voters think the former Labor government’s carbon price had no effect, or only a small effect, on electricity bills – as the Abbott government tries to rerun its cost of living argument against Labor’s pledge to reintroduce an emissions trading scheme.



Only 21% of voters (30% of Liberal/National voters and 15% of Labor and Green voters) believe the carbon price had a big impact on electricity prices, according to the latest poll by Essential Media.



The poll comes as prime minister Tony Abbott ramps up his attack on Bill Shorten’s pledge to reintroduce an emissions trading scheme, calling it an “electricity tax scam” that would massively increase household costs.



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The poll found that 51% of voters thought their electricity bill had gone up over the past 12 months and only 9% thought it had gone down, despite evidence the carbon price repeal had pushed electricity and gas prices down.

The final report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on its monitoring of the carbon price repeal, released Tuesday, confirmed the carbon tax repeal had flowed on to reductions in household electricity and gas bills.



The ACCC said the carbon-related reductions ranged between $153 a year and $269 a year, or $2.90 and $5.10 a week. It “confirmed” the government’s claim, based on Treasury modelling, that overall household savings would have been about $550 a year, because of flow-on cost reductions in rates and council charges, transport and food.



The ACCC chairman, Rod Sims, told Guardian Australia consumers may not have felt the price reductions because “in some states prices did still go up, but by less than they otherwise would have, because extra network costs were still flowing through”.



Sims said it had been his decision to include confirmation of an overall $550 benefit to households.



“Everything we saw told us the original Treasury modelling was about right,” he said.



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Consistent with other recent polls, the Essential poll put Labor ahead on two-party-preferred terms by 53% to 47%.



The small business minister, Bruce Billson, said the ACCC report “confirms that a tax on carbon is harmful for businesses and households. Combined with a proposed increase in the renewable energy target, Bill Shorten’s plan to bring back the carbon tax would massively increase power bills for households and business, destroy jobs and damage industries.”



Coalition frontbencher and communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, pointed out this week that every policy to push low-emissions generation came at a cost – which might in generic terms be called a tax – even the renewable energy target which the government itself supports.



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“There has been a distinction drawn in the debate ... between a fixed-price cost on carbon which people particularly called a carbon tax and one that is floating because it is related to the purchase of permits and that, of course, the price of the permits depends on supply and demand and that’s an ETS. And so in a lot of the literature and discussion you’ve talked about the virtues of a tax versus the virtues of an ETS,” he said.



“But either way they are both a cost. So, yes, you can call them both generically a tax but equally the renewable energy target is a cost. So all of these measures, there is no such thing as a cost-free way of reducing carbon emissions. That is to say, as long as emissions-intensive forms of generating energy are cheaper than the low-emission forms and, of course, that is starting to change, the technological developments with solar in particular.

