At the weekend, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a proposal that she says would cut household power bills by up to $250 a year. The Prime Minister said the plan would try to stop the so-called "gold plating" of the electricity network, which is the over investment in poles and wires.
Brian Green is the Chairman of the Energy Users Association of Australia, a non-profit organisation that focuses on issues affecting business-users of energy. He says the government will struggle to deliver on that plan if it goes ahead.
"Putting forward the idea that bringing the use of metering and trying to slow down expenditure on the networks will result in $250 of savings to households is a bit of a stretch in my opinion."
Mr Green says Australian energy bills are high because of the level of expenditure that has been put into the networks.
"In Europe and the UK, networks have been expanded to cater for growing demand. They have been replaced to cater for aging equipment but the cost of supplying those services has come down dramatically. Here in Australia we've seen network services being expanded under the guise of meeting increased demand and replacing aging assets but the cost has gone up exponentially."
He also says there is more than enough infrastructure to support Australian energy usage and there shouldn't be a need to increase infrastructure investment.
For consumers who wanted to cut their power bills, Mr Green says the most important thing to do is be aware of what appliances you are using.
"Looking at what you are doing, how you are using electricity, is something that we should all be doing. It comes under the heading of efficiency quite broadly, but basically switch off appliances that are on standby that you don't need."
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