{"id":148562,"date":"2025-10-27T23:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T23:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/148562\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T23:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T23:13:09","slug":"power-prices-to-rise-secret-department-documents-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/148562\/","title":{"rendered":"Power prices to rise, secret department documents warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Energy costs are regularly ranked as the top concern for Australian households, documents show. (David Mariuz\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

Household power prices are expected to rise this financial year and Australia’s emissions reductions will need to become much more ambitious, secret advice to the nation’s energy minister shows.<\/p>\n

The federal government has handed over briefing notes written by Chris Bowen’s department at the start of this parliamentary term, after a months-long fight to keep them under wraps.<\/p>\n

The heavily redacted documents warn Mr Bowen that energy costs are regularly ranked as the top concern for Australian households behind food and grocery prices.<\/p>\n

\"Power
\n A draft of the Default Market Offer points to further increases in retail electricity prices. (Lukas Coch\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

“Government policies have provided temporary energy bill relief to households and small businesses,” an unredacted portion of the report reads.<\/p>\n

“Still, the draft Default Market Offer<\/a> points to a further significant increase in retail electricity prices next financial year.”<\/p>\n

The Default Market Offer is a set of baseline power prices for south east Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia, set out by the nation’s energy regulator.<\/p>\n

Under the most recent version for this financial year, which was published in late May, prices were expected to increase between half a per cent and nearly 10 per cent depending on the state.<\/p>\n

A draft version was published in March, before the 2025 election.<\/p>\n

The documents also warn a “strong push” will be needed to finalise Australia’s climate commitments, and more work is needed to hit its carbon pollution goals.<\/p>\n

“Emission reductions need to accelerate rapidly to meet the 2030 target,” the briefing note says.<\/p>\n

It calls for full and timely implementation of Labor’s renewable energy policies to make Australia a “pragmatic climate leader.”<\/p>\n

Since Mr Bowen received the documents, the government has announced its 2035 target, aiming to reduce carbon pollution by between 62 and 70 per cent compared to 2005 levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Energy costs are regularly ranked as the top concern for Australian households, documents show. (David Mariuz\/AAP PHOTOS) Household…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[9,79,1063,179,18,1831,19,1826,17,5,1828,1827,1829,1830,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-148562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-daily-news","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-inkl","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-news-app","19":"tag-news-headlines","20":"tag-news-today","21":"tag-today-news","22":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115448670439461776","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}