Warnings of rising power prices are the latest in a climate scare campaign by the coalition ahead of the election, Labor says.
But the prime minister doubled down on the claim and said it showed Labor did not understand the consequences of its electricity policy proposal.
The Liberal-National coalition released modelling on Tuesday showing consumers would be financially worse off under Labor’s plan to increase the size of the transmission network.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the independent regulator set prices for poles and wires and claimed increasing the value of the network as Labor planned to do would increase household energy prices.
“When Labor say they want to increase the value of the network by $78 billion, what they are saying is they are happy to slug Australian families with a higher bill,” he said.
But the response to Labor’s plan showed the coalition did not have a commitment to net-zero emissions, opposition spokesman Jason Clare said.
He said Labor’s plan to power Australia was the most detailed proposal an opposition had ever released and it had been independently costed and modelled by experts.
“What that (modelling) shows is that if you take the action that we’re proposing to take to get us to net zero by 2050, you cut emissions but you also create create hundreds of thousands of jobs, most of them in the regions, and you cut people’s electricity bills,” he told reporters in Sydney on Tuesday.
Mr Clare also criticised the government for not revealing where it had come up with the figures showing increased prices.
“The Business Council of Australia, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Farmers Federation have all backed (Labor’s plan) in, so if the government wants to play this game, release your modelling,” he said.
Yet Mr Morrison said the government weren’t the only ones criticising Labor’s policy and similar observations had been made by independent think tanks.
“This is like Labor’s aged care policy which fell apart after a couple of days when they didn’t know how many nurses they needed,” he told reporters in Perth on Tuesday.
“Government is hard, government is complex, government requires an understanding of how the economy works and how the mechanisms of government work and that’s what we’ve demonstrated.”
