Back in June the ACCC issued a report that concluded the retail electricity system is a failure in almost every aspect. You'd have to be thick to have not come to this conclusion a decade ago but that's what you get from an organisation set up to perpetuate the neoliberal fantasy of free market competition.
https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Retail%20Electricity%20Pricing%20Inquiry—Final%20Report%20June%202018_Exec%20summary.pdf
Some highlights from the report:
some of the most vulnerable in our community are forced to struggle through freezing winters and scorching summers, with many others also having difficulty paying their bills.
Many small to medium businesses operate on very small margins, and cannot afford the increases to their costs that have occurred over past years (if you cannot meet costs that means you fail as a business just in case you missed that)
“Commercial and industrial customers, like mining and manufacturing companies, have watched what has been a relative competitive advantage to them, affordable electricity, now threatening their viability.” (again, failing businesses - won't that be good for the unemployment figures!)
And I'm sure the biggest "highlight" is that you have lost thousands of dollars for no reason other than the government wanted to move your money to wealthier people than you which is neoliberalism in a nutshell and thereby impoverishing the entire nation.
Let me remind you that the only justification for the electricity retailers being there is that they were supposed charge less which, according to the ACCC, they have failed to do.
So now, the ACCC's genius* plan is to set the price just like the government would if the system was nationalised like it was before the retail electrity disaster occurred.
The price that the ACCC is setting has to include the cost of:
-Every CEO of of every retailer - tens or hundreds of millions?
-The rest of the board of every retailer - tens of hundreds of millions?
-Middle management of every retailer - A few million?
-Coal face workers of every retailer - the people that obfuscate the real price you pay and don't help you on the phone - a few million?
-The various services that businesses require: lawyers, accounts, IT, web hosting etc - tens of millions?
-Shareholders … this includes foreign governments that operate nationalised electricity systems ie. you pay for another countries electricity.
And now the stuff that the ACCC hasn't just called completely pointless in their report.
-The electricity grid
-Electricity generation (which is of course still privatised so the price is still high to pay for CEO's yada yada … but according to the ACCC they aren't impoverishing the entire nation by removing internal economic activity which is what happens when most of your money goes on electricity)
There are a whole bunch of other recommendations like disallowing hiding the price from consumers, allowing "genuine price comparison" (meaning there was none before), a mandatory code for comparator websites be introduced so that offers are recommended based on customer benefit, not commissions paid (because fools thought they were getting a fair comparison using these sites).
But all the recommendations are ridiculous when the entire reason for these retailers existing was to provide lower prices. Now that even a champion of the idiotic philosophy that allowed the businesses to operate in the first place has said that they have failed, and are "largely broken", there is simply no reason that the government should be setting prices thereby allowing them to continue pointlessly aquiring people's money.
Liberal and Labour have naturally accepted the report and are saying they're happy with the price being set, just like it was still nationalised, and only The Greens are claiming that they will do the rational thing here. Which is to dismantle the entire thing and have the government set the price in a nationalised system again and we probably won't have as many service interruptions either.
Liberal and Labour are intent on setting a price which pays for all those CEOs and shareholders which the ACCC has implied are pointless.
Only the Greens are claiming they want to nationalise the grid again thereby avoiding all the CEO's and shareholders.
- They actually refer to this plan as "sound economic reform" as if keeping a system that you just claimed has failed is a sound idea.
That's what happens when you keep voting for Liberal and Labor.