The Victorian election put gas laws on the ballot. The Coalition and One Nation have chosen to fight for the indefensible

The gas industry is ‘largely foreign-owned, pays little back to the Australian people and pushes up the cost of healthcare’, Saul Griffith writes. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAPView image in fullscreenThe gas industry is ‘largely foreign-owned, pays little back to the Australian people and pushes up the cost of healthcare’, Saul Griffith writes. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAPThe Victorian election put gas laws on the ballot. The Coalition and One Nation have chosen to fight for the indefensibleSaul GriffithThe ‘right to choose’ crowd would damage Victorians’ health and move costs on to those least able to pay

Follow our Australian politics live blog for latest updates

Get our new political email, free app or daily news podcast

As an engineer I see the climate problem simply. We have a collection of machines – some burn fossil fuels, others don’t. We need to stop buying the ones that burn poisons and instead buy electric ones and run them on clean electricity. Live well, breathe easy, pay less.

From January, new homes and most new commercial buildings in Victoria will be built all-electric, locking in lower bills and lower emissions. From March, when a gas hot water system dies it must be replaced with an efficient electric one, so existing homes get the savings too. And when a renter’s gas heater fails, the landlord must install efficient electric heating. The tenant’s bills get slashed, not just the owner-occupier’s.

Those laws are now on the ballot because the gas industry has the money and power to unduly influence our politics. Before November’s election, the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation are all promising to scrap them before they start. They say they are defending your “right to choose”.

Read moreWhat they are defending is the right of a few very large, mostly foreign-owned gas companies to keep making enormous profits by making choices for you, choices we know damage your children’s health today and their future tomorrow.

We did the modelling for the Liberals and Nationals under senator Andrew Bragg’s electrification inquiry. One Nation has been harder to reach, though I’ve tried. They could make their own spreadsheets and see the economics is better for electrification.

Three parties are wrapping themselves in the flag and false liberties while opposing the most obviously national-interest energy policy on offer: running as much of Australia as possible on the thing Australia has more of than anyone else. Sunshine.

Here is the moment that matters. Every gas appliance in Victoria will die, on average, once every 15 years or so. The day you replace it is the day the savings are won or lost. Choose electric heating, hot water and cooking, and a typical Victorian family of four saves about $2,000 a year. Add solar and a battery and that rises to about $3,800, every year. Add electric vehicles and it’s north of $5,000. Electric machines are simply better at their jobs: an electric car uses a third to a quarter of the energy to drive the same kilometre; a heat pump or reverse-cycle air conditioner uses a third to a quarter of the energy to heat the same water or air. Since 2023, Australian households that have electrified have saved a combined $185m on bills, according to IEEFA, and that figure only goes up.

Plumbers and electricians tell me customers ask one question – “What’s cheapest to run?” – and the answer is electric every single time.

Now to the part the “right to choose” crowd leaves out. Gas pipes are paid off over decades by whoever is still connected. As households leave, the cost lands on fewer and fewer people, and the people left holding it are the ones who can’t leave: renters, pensioners who can’t afford to upgrade, apartment dwellers with no say over the building. Sensible Australians will choose no gas. The “right to choose” crowd will keep the rest in thrall to the gas industry while the costs rise for those least able to pay. The Australian Gas Infrastructure Group has gone to the media with modelling of the terrible costs those stranded customers will face.

Read moreI agree. They will, unless they switch to electric, which will save them. The argument is circular: keep people on the expensive fuel, or the price of the expensive fuel will go up. This from an industry that is largely foreign-owned, pays little back to the Australian people and pushes up the cost of healthcare by poisoning us, as burning gas in a kitchen puts nitrogen dioxide into our lungs and carbon into everyone’s atmosphere. Their remedy is to keep everyone locked in to a thing they can’t afford. That is treating customers like mugs.

Sensible people will see the costs they describe as an argument for an orderly, financed transition off gas, not against one. Exactly what Victoria already legislated. Victoria’s rules stop the hole getting deeper: stop connecting new homes and you stop laying pipe that someone will still be paying off in 2060.

Upfront cost is the real barrier. A heat pump, solar and a battery pay for themselves, but plenty of households don’t have thousands of dollars in the bank to get started. New South Wales has worked this out: zero-interest loans for households earning under $210,000 a year, repaid out of the savings on the bill. Victoria should match it, then go further, extending rebates and discounts to renters and strata households. Otherwise the people who most need cheaper bills will be the last to get them.

Politicians might call that a “right to choose”. I’d call it a waste of time, energy and money. Australia is going electric because it’s better for our wallets, communities and planet. So, let’s get on with it.