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Electricity prices had their biggest fall, then their biggest rise, eleven months apart. The rebate did that, not the power.
The energy rebate is gone. The credit that quietly knocked dollars off household power bills for two years ended in December, and the official electricity figure has jumped. Power bills are soaring, runs the story, and the number seems to prove it. The same number tells a second story almost no one mentions. A year before it soared, it fell off a cliff, further than it ever had. Same figure, opposite directions, eleven months apart.
The Bureau of Statistics is blunt about why. The swings are the rebate arriving and the rebate leaving, not the price of electricity. Strip the rebate out, and the underlying price barely moved.
1. The biggest fall, then the biggest rise
Drawn out, the line does something electricity prices do not do on their own. Through 2022 and 2023 it climbs, the energy-crisis years. Then in the middle of 2024 it drops off a ledge, from an index of 112 in June to 73 in October, a fall of about a third in four months. Generation and network costs do not collapse a third in a single spring.
Then it climbs back just as fast. By the second half of 2025 the figure is rising at double-digit annual rates again, not because power got dramatically dearer, but because the cheap months it is being compared with were the ones with the rebate in them.
ABS monthly CPI indicator for electricity, index numbers, weighted average of eight capital cities. The line drops as the federal rebate is credited to bills from July 2024, bottoms in October 2024, then climbs as the rebate is used up. Series to September 2025. Source: ABS.
2. It is the rebate, not the price
The dates line up exactly with the cash. A $300 household rebate was credited to bills in instalments across 2024-25, which is what pulls the line down from the middle of 2024. A smaller $150 followed, paid in two instalments to the end of 2025. The fund then closed on 31 December 2025.3 Each time an instalment lands, the measured price drops; once the credits stop, it springs back to the bill the household was always going to pay.
A rebate does not lower the price of electricity. It moves who pays part of the bill, from the household to the budget, for a while. When the figure fell, the cost had not gone away; it had shifted onto the public purse. When the figure climbs, the cost is shifting back. The line on the chart is tracking that handover, not the meter.
3. Both sides are reading the rebate
This cuts in both directions, which is the useful part. When the figure was falling through 2024, it was offered as evidence that pressure on power bills was easing. When it climbs through 2026, it is offered as evidence that power is out of control. Both are pointing at the same artefact. The honest number sits between them, and the Bureau prints it in the same release: a few per cent, in line with general inflation.
Whether a temporary rebate was a good way to spend the money is a real debate worth having. But it is a debate about the budget, not about the price of power. The headline electricity figure cannot settle it, because for two years the headline electricity figure has mostly been measuring the rebate.
The shape of it
The official electricity figure posted its biggest fall and its biggest rise within a single year. Neither was the price of power doing anything unusual. A rebate was credited to bills, so the figure fell; the rebate ran out, so the figure rose. The Bureau says as much, and publishes the price with the rebate removed: up a few per cent, not a third.
Power bills are a fair thing to argue about. The figure both sides reach for to do it has spent two years measuring a subsidy, then the end of one. That is not the cost of electricity. It is the shadow the rebate cast over the number.
What this finding does not establish
It does not say households felt nothing. The credits were real money, and bills genuinely fell while they were paid and rise as they stop. The point is narrower: the movement in the price index is dominated by the rebate, so the index is a poor guide to what generating and delivering electricity actually costs.
It does not reconstruct the underlying price itself. The rebate cannot be backed out of the published index by a reader. The 3.9 per cent excluding-rebate figure is the Bureau’s own estimate, quoted here, not recomputed.
It works in monthly figures throughout. The Bureau’s quarterly series shows the same shape with different magnitudes, and the two are not mixed here. The measured figures shown on the chart run to September 2025, the latest in the monthly series as retrieved; the March 2026 figures are quoted from the Bureau’s release.
Sources
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Monthly Consumer Price Index indicator (catalogue 6401.0), dataflow CPI_M via the ABS Data API (api.data.abs.gov.au), Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Series: electricity; index numbers and percentage change from the corresponding month of the previous year; weighted average of eight capital cities; original. Retrieved 21 May 2026; latest observation September 2025.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Consumer Price Index, Australia, March 2026 release, electricity commentary. The annual change of 25.4 per cent to March 2026, the 3.9 per cent excluding the impact of Commonwealth and State Government electricity rebates, and the attribution of the rise to rebates "being used up by households" are quoted from that release. Figures are on the monthly basis.
- Australian Government, Energy Bill Relief Fund (energy.gov.au) and Treasury announcements. Up to $300 per household across 2024-25 in quarterly instalments; up to $150 per household from 1 July 2025 to 31 December 2025 in two instalments; the fund ended 31 December 2025. Quoted as stated by the government.
Footnote (1): the monthly index runs from September 2017, so annual changes are available from September 2018. Over that span the largest annual fall is 35.6 per cent (year to October 2024) and the largest annual rise is 33.9 per cent (year to September 2025); these are the minimum and maximum of the annual-change series. Figures are original, not seasonally adjusted.
Footnote (2): "barely moved" and "a few per cent" refer to the Bureau’s excluding-rebate estimate of 3.9 per cent for the year to March 2026, set against the 25.4 per cent measured over the same year. Both are the Bureau’s figures on the monthly basis.
Footnote (3): the index fell from 112.2 in June 2024 to 72.9 in October 2024, about a third, as the $300 rebate was credited; it had returned above its pre-rebate level by mid-2025 as the credits were used up. The rebate amounts and dates are in source 3.
How this finding was built
The series
The electricity figures were retrieved directly from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Data API: the monthly Consumer Price Index indicator for electricity, weighted average of the eight capital cities, original. The file was saved and every measured figure read from that saved copy.
One basis, on purpose
The Bureau publishes electricity on a monthly and a quarterly basis, and they differ because the rebate instalments fall inside quarters. This finding uses the monthly basis throughout, the same basis on which the Bureau reports the rebate effect, so the chart and the quoted excluding-rebate figure can be read together. The quarterly series was retrieved as a cross-check and shows the same shape.
What is measured, quoted, or computed
The index path and the annual changes on the chart are measured in the monthly data. The 25.4 per cent and 3.9 per cent figures, and the rebate amounts and dates, are quoted from the Bureau’s release and the government. The fall from 112.2 to 72.9 is arithmetic on the measured index. This finding makes no forecast.
First published 21 May 2026. Figures are as at the ABS releases cited. Subject to revision as later months are published; revisions will be logged on this page.