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I won’t go so far as to say Wayne Swan made a goose of himself in his claim last week that electricity price rises contributing to higher inflation are a “one-off,” but , to put it mildly, he sent an incorrect message to consumers.

In rebuttal, here, for example, is Steve Edwell, head of the Australian Energy Regulator: “Network services have recently become a significant source of price pressure. The key drivers are substantial increases in capital and operating expenditure.”

Network charges contribute roughly half the end-user cost of power. Generation prices contribute nearly the other half.

Edwell indicated in a talk that the expenditure increases his agency had allowed for New South Wales and ACT utilities would increase their revenues some $2 billion over the next five years. The AER is currently considering substantial investment proposals from the Queensland and South Australian network businesses. If approved, Queensland, the second largest demand area behind NSW, will see network charges go up by about 10 per cent in year one and by four per cent annually in the following four years.

Here, too, is Premier Colin Barnett, speaking to a Legislative Assembly committee back in May: “The sad news for West Australians is that they have just had a very substantial 25 per cent electricity price rise and an increase on a similar scale, although not as large, will happen next year.” These slugs for the consumers follow eight years in which the former ALP government kept retail prices capped.

Then, of course, there is the prediction by Port Jackson Partners in their review of infrastructure for the Business Council that retail prices “will likely double by 2015.” How could the Treasurer of Australia not even refer to this in a statement dealing with power charges within days of it appearing? That, on one reading, is chutzpah way beyond the benchmarks set by Paul Keating and Peter Costello – or it incompetence?

In per kilowatt hour terms, PJP suggest that wholesale generation costs could rise from five cents in 2009 to 10 cents in 2015, that network charges could go up from 4.3 cents to nine cents, that the flow-through cost of the renewable energy target could double from 0.6 cents to 1.2 cents – that’s an all up rise of 10.4 cents per kWh over six years.

On average, Australian householders consume about 7,000 kWh of electricity a year, so the PJP forecast represents an increase in the residential sector’s annual power bill of about $728. Some of the burden of the emissions trading costs will be ameliorated for a minority of householders for a time.

In round terms, there are 9.5 million residential account holders, so the national increase by 2015, if PJP are right, would represent almost seven billion dollars. To which you can add GST charges. And this is before the emissions trading scheme, planned for introduction in 2011, has really started to bite – because bite it must if the promise by both Rudd and Turnbull to pursue a five cents reduction in Australia’s emissions against 2000 levels by 2020 is to be achieved.

The BCA and its consultants have challenged the Rudd government to address the issue of much higher power bills – their concern, of course, is for big business, which uses about 40 per cent of all powers sent out – in the promised, but delayed energy white paper.

Given Wayne Swan’s intervention in the past week, perhaps the Treasurer could use the next sitting of Federal Parliament to comment? Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition could assist him by asking a question?

Perhaps we could even have a sensible national public debate, based on facts, about why power bills will continue to go up and up and how this will affect householders and business. Is that a pig I see flying past? It certainly isn’t a Swan.