The Coalition having a new energy policy means we all have to sit through some Ted O’Brien. Which is maybe the weakest part of the Coalition policy. There is some chat about his debate with Chris Bowen at the national press club on Thursday and O’Brien pretends he much prefers to be on the ground, mixing it with the people.

I’m from Queensland and lived on the Sunshine Coast for a few years and so I know plenty of people who have been on the ground with O’Brien, and let’s just say that if his statement were to be fact checked, it may not come out his way. Moving on.

O’Brien is asked where the $1,300 a year increase on power bills the Coalition uses to hit Labor with comes from.

Q: Where do you get that $1,300 figure from? I tried to look at this last night. You’re right that power bills have gone up, but I couldn’t get anywhere near $1,300 – only in the worst-case scenario, perhaps in a very big house that’s using a lot of electricity.

O’Brien suggests that the number comes from the increase of the default market offer and the $275 reduction Labor promised (by 2025) which wasn’t there. So the number doesn’t appear to be grounded in reality

Actually, if you look at the default market offer which comes out each year, what you see is increases since Labor came to office of well over $1,000, and they promised you a reduction of $275.

So what you have, including here – I’m in Sydney today – you have people in Western Sydney paying $1,300 more than what Labor had promised them. That’s a fact.

Hmmmm. Not sure about that one. We will take a look at that too.

On the modelling for the gas policy, O’Brien says:

When it comes to our modelling, we are, again, the only party that has done modelling. And the modelling that has now been released goes to our gas policy.

What it says is big industrial users will see a 15% reduction in the cost of gas. That means, when you go to the shop and you buy a bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, a jar of jam, the packaging for all of those products – costs come down, it eventually flows through to consumers.

You buy some bricks, you buy a house with steel – costs come down. When you look at what Peter Dutton has already done on the 25-cent reduction per litre on petrol, and then you look at what we’re trying to do with gas, it all comes down to driving costs down.