EDITORIAL
Labor Leader and Shadow Minister for Tourism, Hospitality and Events Rebecca White
It shouldn’t cost hospitality businesses an arm and a leg just to keep the lights on Of the many conversations my team and I have had with hospitality businesses over the past 18 months, one of the things we hear raised most is power prices, and how they seem to be going up, and up, and up.
rebate scheme, but instead they have the new Large Business Customer Electricity Support Scheme, which doesn’t work. Many businesses don’t meet the criteria for this scheme because the price they used to pay for power was too low or they don’t use enough power to qualify. For other businesses, there’s so much red tape that it’s not worth the time to apply, particularly when the returns available under the scheme are so low. In fact, during the recently held Budget Estimates, it was revealed that only 10 businesses have been approved grants under the scheme, for a combined total of approximately $160,000. When it comes to the skyrocketing price of energy bills, Labor has one simple belief – we should pay Tasmanian Prices for Tasmanian Power. That’s why under Labor’s Right Priorities Plan, we’ve promised to cap electricity price increases at 2.5 per cent a year for all households and regulated business customers if we’re elected to government. We would also re-establish the electricity rebate scheme that was in place in 2018, which would ensure that businesses don’t have to jump through hoops to benefit from the state’s abundance of cheap, renewable energy. With the price of other goods on the rise, it shouldn’t cost hospitality businesses an arm and a leg just to keep the lights on.
Unfortunately, there appears to be little relief in sight for businesses of all sizes doing it tough.
For smaller hospitality venues on tariffs there’s another price rise coming into effect from July 1, which at the time of writing, is expected to be between five and 15 per cent. This comes off the back of a 12 per cent increase last year, which was particularly hard to swallow as businesses rebuilt from COVID border closures. Despite taking a policy to cap power prices to the last election, the Government has broken its promise, and Tasmanian businesses and households are quite literally paying the price. If the Liberals had stuck to this policy, Tasmanian power bills would be immune from the volatility of the mainland market and would be about 20 per cent lower. Larger contracted energy customers have also been left hurting by broken Liberal promises, with some paying up to 50 per cent more for power.
The government promised they would reintroduce the
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