Coalition vows gas will be crucial to keep power bills down as Labor launches fresh nuclear attacks

The Coalition has promised power bills will go down in their first term of Government, should they win the next election, as new figures from Labor show the nuclear plan could curtail growth by up to $4 trillion over 25 years.

Gas will be crucial in the short-term to keep power bills low, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Nationals leader David Littleproud said on Tuesday, saying more announcements will come before the election - although it’s unlikely to have a dollar figure attached to the pledge.

At a press conference in Adelaide later on Tuesday, Mr Dutton said gas would be “incredibly important”, and that he was eager to accelerate projects like Narrabri in NSW.

“There’s lots of gas required. We’ve spoken about discovering more fields, and we’re strongly supportive of condensing the timelines,” he said.

A new gas strategy is “exactly what we’ll be announcing” before the election, which will put downward pressure on bills, Mr Littleproud said.

“When you look at it in a commonsense way, the only way that you can reduce bills is to increase supply and the only way you can do that quickly, is to bring on gas and bring gas on quickly into the market,” Mr Littleproud told Sky.

In releasing Frontier Economics’ costings for the Coalition’s nuclear policy - which claims a 44 per cent saving compared to Labor’s “renewables only” strategy - Mr Dutton said he would have “more to say” about the Coalition’s broader energy policy in the coming months.

Meanwhile, Labor has launched a fresh attack at the Coalition’s nuclear policy, after new Government figures purported to show the economy would grow 12 per cent slower every year until 2050.

The Frontier Economics analysis is based on an assumption that Australia’s 2050 electricity grid is 40 per cent smaller than the Government’s plan, which predicts the country will be almost entirely powered by renewables.

Labor’s fresh figures, provided to the Nine Newspapers, show under its plan the economy would grow at 2.12 per cent a year, while under the Coalition that would be just 1.89 per cent.

That would equate to a 12 per cent difference in economic growth, compounding each year - although no analysis has been provided to produce the figures.

Asked how he got the $4 trillion figure, Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Wednesday said the numbers came directly from what Frontier had provided.

“What you’re talking about is the growth sacrificed under the numbers provided by the Coalition. That (figure) is based on the low growth scenario in the work that has been done,” he said.

“The economy and those numbers are $294 billion smaller in 2050, the cumulative loss output between now and mid-century is $4 trillion... Those are numbers that come from the scenario they adopted.

“What they’re proposing is less industry and higher energy prices. This is the economic and fiscal absurdity of that trash that they put up at the end of last week.”

Mr Dutton said the Government’s figures were “comical”.

“The work of Frontier says over time, electricity prices will be 44 per cent cheaper under our policy than Labor’s,” he said - despite the analysis only showing the entire policy would be cheaper, not explicitly how that would trickle down to bills.

Dr Chalmers said Mr Dutton’s plan would equate to higher electricity prices for Australians, saying nuclear was “the most expensive form” for energy which would set Australia back.