Another round for all eligible Victorians, from 24th of March, 2023.
"The $250 Power Saving Bonus will be re-opened to all eligible Victorian households from 24 March, including those that received payments under previous rounds, when they visit the Labor Government’s bill-busting Victorian Energy Compare website."
This is the government release
For those who have still yet to apply for the current round, visit the same website and apply before the 23/03/2023.
It was part of Dan’s election promise.
I’m waiting for Dom to say something before March election.
But Dan and Dom are different states?
yes, Vic Libs have a leader called John Pesutto.
Nice 1
Wish I had a Pandabargain refund
:D
Thanks op
Great, this will be good for everything. Including inflation.
It's a con by the rich on the working class that things like this cause inflation.
The fact is
"Excess corporate profits have driven at least half of inflation in Australia, the US and the UK."
Read some more interesting facts from here:
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly…
I doubt people like TEER3X will bother educating themselves but it's kind of you to try.
It's easier for people to parrot the mainstream view vs critically think hence why inequality and corporate greed is out of control.
It's easier for people to parrot the mainstream view vs critically think hence why inequality and corporate greed is out of control.
not even as deep as that - just, "it's self-interest, stupid"
Bring on the inflation! It's making my mortgage cheaper!
It's true. Corporate greed will backfire on them with wage rises.
The job churns are already ramping up.
Always just follow the money trail. It’s in large corps best interest to keep blaming everything on inflation. Before that it was covid. If they were really struggling you would see more bankruptcies instead of record profit year after year. Just look at the banks.
Been the game for a long time to blame the little guy and keep them uneducated.
Look at all the people on the rich list, they run businesses, none of them made it as an employee (very hard to gouge and make excess gains as an employee)
Love inflation. Bring on more interest rate hikes I say.
hope it gets so high we all starve
The Saturday paper published a great article explaining how consumers are not causing the majority of inflationary pressure. Instead it's corporate profiteering. Titled: 'The true drivers of the cost-of-living crisis'.
If you don't have access to the paper, then you can listen to a summary podcast here:
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/podcast/how-corporate-pr…
Educate yourself
I'd keep it in a high interest account or invested because the government will come for it in the form of tax rises.
Is household the address or the account holder? The old account holder moved out but claimed for the same address
:D
So stupid this is. I wonder how much it actually costs to give each person that applies the $250.
Don’t do it then. Save the taxpayers some money.
Of course I will still claim it. But this is not really "driving down the cost of living" as stated on the website.
the idea is to give incentive to people who are not aware of energy comparison sites, and been paying a large bill without knowing.
I wonder which part of the campaign is stupid, is the stupid part around their inability to flag and exclude repeat user like yourself from getting the bonus? :)
So stupid this is.
but
Of course I will still claim it.
It still amazes me that people can whinge about something positive that a government is doing.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Claim it and/or get a saving by switching providers. Win-win.
@Maz78: Depends on what the goal is.
If it is an incentive to get people to compare energy retailers, then the metric is whether it would make one do that.
@brotherfranciz: You are not getting it. What he means is he would rather pay 300$ less in taxes than trying to get 250$ back by doing weird stuff.
@DrScavenger: Except that's not an option.
I'm guessing if you were to offer to buy him a drink, he'd say he'd rather the money
What he means is he would rather pay 300$ less in taxes than trying to get 250$ back by doing weird stuff.
You forgot about the actual electricity saving, Which is the whole point of the deal.
If you end up with $250 back and another $250 off your power bill then that $300 tax investment is doing pretty well for you when you get $500 back.
Also, weird stuff ? Annual price comparisons of recurring services is something everyone should be doing anyway. It's not weird.
It is driving costs down Shawn because it’s making people go and atleast see how much they can save if they switched. The essence of the scheme mean that people save money on their bill by switching to new provider rather than assuming they pay the same and keep loyal and never switch. It also forces retailers to become more competitive and lower prices to keep or attain new customers something that would not happen if less people were shopping around. If you can’t see this then ur the Stupid one
@Gavman: This. It's putting competition back into the market.
The same will happen when the state run electricity company gets up and running.
Our money coming back to us. What's the harm?
Why take it from us in the first place?
State govt does not take your taxes. The fed govt does. The state gets a share. They're choosing to give it back this way while making the energy market more competitive.
@donkeyhokey: State government takes your taxes in lots of ways. They just get most of their revenue from the Fed who collects it on your behalf.
Lots of state taxes though.
State govt does not take your taxes.
Oh Yes they do,
and you get **** all in return
Dan is taking from the rich (EV tax) and giving to everyone (electricity account holders)…yep, i see what you mean…
@DoctorCalculon: Its a $3k one off subsidy (which i didnt get because i bought it before that was introduced). However, i paid almost a grand last year for the EV tax. Explain to me how this is fair.
Explain to me how this is fair.
LOL! I suggest you write a letter to about Dan how unfair this EV tax is for the early adopters.
Because it's not driving down the cost of living at all. This $250 probably helps some people out a lot but many people that do claim really don't need it at all. And how much money does it cost for each $250 given (processing the payments etc), that is just wasting money. How about the government actually tries to bring down the cost of energy prices instead of just giving handouts and think that they've done their bit.
Heard of something called energy price caps? It's been front of centre in the news as of late
@huey: Can't see them putting a price cap.. its some the Greens want to do but really the should be doing something about supply…
You didn't even mention the actual point of the promotion, which is to get people to use the website and find cheaper energy prices. That will bring down the cost of living for them and the more people that switch to a cheaper deal, the more energy companies will need to offer competitive prices to retain their customers so there's an additional indirect benefit as well.
@dazweeja: Good point. If the actual comparisons are fair but. Another user below said they would be worse off if they had switched to one of the providers recommended by the site. But the worst thing is its nearly impossible to compare them fairly when taking into account all the variables: daily service charge, usage rate (sometimes multiple rates, peak/off peak, step pricing etc), pay on time discount on the usage or on the entire bill.
@Shaun Prawn: @Shaun Prawn That's the whole point of the Energy Compare website. It loads your usage data from AEMO and tells you the cheapest plan for your specific circumstances.
The exception would be if you're on a no longer available plan that is cheaper, but that would be a rare case. For most people they are going to get $250 and be able to see the cheapest plan available to them.
It will help the government if you don't claim it. Bonus for other people if you stop whinging too. 😁
This line of thinking has already been played out in the 80s. Didn't work out so well then
Yes, it would be nicer if the government only used public money in ways that multiplied the value it delivered
Yes, it weren't going to use the money for that purpose, it would be fair for it to be returned via a lower tax rate for everybody
Yes, it would be better not to have to do these idiotic things
But that isn't the choice. You either have a party that spends recklessly, but builds things and gives a bit of money back to everyone. Or you have the other party, which claims to be for those things, but when in power spends really recklessly, builds nothing, and shitloads of money to those on 'their team'.
At the moment those are your choices. Perfection (or anything remotely close) is not on the menu
It makes the rich unecessarily richer and helps the poor pay their next bill or buy food for the week.
More excuse to take and waste more in the first place. It may feel like a small win, but only because they fool people into that line of thought.
Because this is funded by debt, as we're already in debt. This isn't "your money coming back to you", because they're borrowing to fund it.
You will pay taxes for this, AND for the interest.
yeah, great
Couldn't have said it better.
Remember folks for every 250$ you get back from the Government they have taken $750 from you and spent $500 in inefficiencies and useless bureaucrats !!!!!!
A smart way to do this would have been to create a special "Cheapest Automatic plan" that the Energy user can subscribe to one time !!!
Then force the electrical companies to share their separate retail prices with every NMI number that has subscribed to this plan, run a simple comparison and send an email , letter or post to the address with their cheapest choices !!!
Or better still auto switch the default plan to the cheapest for the address. Repeat the process every time the company wants to change prices.
Easily doable with the data they have and quite simply scalable rather than spending WASTED money on the back end like this.
I wonder how much it actually costs to give each person that applies the $250.
This was downvoted. But I feel it's been judged way too harshly. Upvoted.
I actually have to agree, just because the actual compare site does not compare all providers I found. Last time the things it spat out, if I was to switch id be worse off then my current plan…
Which provider didn't it compare? Retailers are required to lodge their plans with the ESC so it should have any currently available plans listed.
Sorry maybe i should have been specific. Were with AGL i cant actually remember if it spat out AGL, but not the plan were on. Whether it was because it was an old plan, or seniors discount. Honestly cant remember. When i do it in 28 days ill let you know again
what do you mean cost? they don't hire people to hand out this money to you in an envelope. jesus christ.
Administration costs. Honestly, I think we would be shocked if we knew the real cost of rolling out these government programs.
Ignorance is bliss, you live the dream
better than being a liberal.
@baldur: of course, you live the dream mate, better than a labour, or a green, or a conservative or a progressive, or whatever label you wish to stick to whomever you got no idea about.
Millions…
IIRC there was public servant here that told us even a simple round about installation on a road costs millions.
I can’t imagine the cost to administer this program :(
There will be of course some benefit, those whom are paying too much that don’t know that switching will save them money will of course be the obvious, and maybe the only beneficiary of this program. All other people are the losers.
Although the cynic in me says this will also score political points as most people think it’s just free money, what’s wrong with returning money to the people etc etc…
Report says the last round of payments has cost over $425 million. A mere drop in the buck of the state debt of around $160 billion that Dan has chalked up so far.
So what's another $425,000,000 on the debt then? :)
What did he start at? And what is the ratio of debt to 'income'? That's what we should be paying attention to, or something like it. A 'big scary number' without context doesn't really say anything.
What did he start at?
A 'big scary number' without context doesn't really say anything.
And what is the ratio of debt to 'income'?
Good points indeed, I'm glad someone asked.
in 2001, our Debt to state Product (GDP for a state if you like) was 2%.
in 2021 it's over 20%
and by 2025 (according to Treasury - Governments own estimates basically) it'll be 31.5%.
So not only is the number big, it's getting worse.
@cloudy: Interesting, thanks. Agree with what outlander implies too, effectively asking if it's worth it yeah? Some of that debt is investment into infrastructure, which generates more income later. Some of it is overdue because of a too low debt ratio in the past. There's definitely going to be waste (this second round of handouts probably is, the first round probably wasn't) but there's also definitely going to be productivity investments like airport rail and level crossing removal.
What I have learnt from covid is take as much handout as u can cause they will make everyone pay it back in subsequent years.
That is the beauty of it. People thinks they are getting $250 but it probably cost them $1000 on top as tax payers. No such thing as a free lunch.
Thanks OP!
Can you just compare Gas, happy with my electric
Believe you have to do an electricity comparison. But there's no need to change retailers. You just do the comparison (takes 5 mins) then claim the $250.
You just need to enter your elec details to claim the $250 to help check if you're making duplicate claims. However, when you're there, you can compare Elec, Gas or any combination of the two. I found it useful as there is an option to extract the last 12 months of usage so you get an actual like for like comparison of other plans.
Are you eligible even if you don't pay taxes? Foreign citizen living in VIC and paying elec bill?
why dont you pay taxes?
Student with no income.
The answer is yes. As long as your name is on the thing you get money. Sincerely also former foreign citizen with no income (now an income lol)
yes, you are eligible as long as bill is in your name and only 1 person from household can claim
LOL! Free money, and still you can't please everyone.
Lol at all the broke ass mfers downvoting me
this is how you control inflation
With all this talk of rounds, it may be useful for someone to know that the current round -
Opened: 01/07/2022
Closes: 23/03/2023 (at midnight)
Brilliant, thank you, was looking for that exact info.
Originally it was meant to remain open until 30 June 2023.
Free money has caused massive inflation, so let's give out more free money! Bravo.
Don't know where you're getting your supply of free money from, but I'm fairly sure $250 isn't an economy ending sum
It's $425 million plus the cost of processing. In addition. To the last $425 million for the same scheme last time.
How are you landing at $425M? The program according to the press release linked above is $3.75M (for this round for the Energy Assistance Program), $250M for the previous round.
I'm not sure how either figure was landing on, so curious if someone knows off hand. I mean a quick google has 2.81M dwellings in last census times that by $250 is $702.5M
![[VIC] $250 Power Saving Bonus (New Round, Previous Claimants Can Apply Again) @ Victorian Energy Compare](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/88/759188.jpg?h=24e45548)
All I needed to hear!
Reminder added. Thanks op!