Every household in the country will get a $300 discount on their energy bills under a $3.5 billion package included in the federal budget.
Small businesses will also benefit from the Energy Bill Relief Fund, with around a million eligible organisations to get $325 off their power bills.
“From July 1, Australians will receive an energy rebate of $300 – and one million small businesses will get a bit more,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said.
“The ABS has shown how cutting energy bills directly cuts inflation too.
“Keeping the lights on for families and businesses – and keeping downward pressure on inflation.”
Who’s eligible for the rebate?
Unlike last year’s budget, which included energy bill relief for about 5 million vulnerable households, there’s no eligibility criteria this year – all of Australia’s more than 10 million housholds will get the rebate.
About 1 million small businesses – the same as last year – will also be eligible for a $325 rebate.
The rebate will be automatically applied to your energy bills after July 1.
Is this going to add to inflation?
According to the government, no – quite the opposite, in fact.
The policy is the budget’s main push to combat both cost-of-living pressures and inflation in a single blow.
According to budget papers, because the relief is a rebate rather than a direct cash payment, the move will bring inflation down by 0.5 per cent this year alone.
That’s the lion’s share of the 0.6 per cent drop to under 3 per cent by the end of the year predicted by Treasury, whose forecasts are far more optimistic than the Reserve Bank’s.
The RBA last week said it expected inflation to not fall under three per cent until the end of next year, but was not able to take any budget measures into its modelling.
The $300 rebate is an extension of last year’s energy relief, which Chalmers said had lopped about 13 per cent off electricity price increases.
“From the June quarter 2023 to the March quarter 2024, household energy bill relief directly reduced grow
th in CPI electricity prices by 12.9 percentage points,” budget papers state.
