Mr GUNNER - 2012-11-28
How much funding have you included in your mini-budget next week to compensate all schools to ensure that none of them suffer from your price rise hike?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, thank you to the member for Fannie Bay for his question. These price hikes will affect everyone in the community. The tariff increases which will come into effect from 1 January next year will, indeed, have a very profound impact on schools that have already tight budgets. That is why we have chosen to subsidise the public schools system. Instead of a 30% increase in electricity bills, we will reduce that to 15%, effectively, by the use of significant subsidies.
Yes, schools will be impacted across the Northern Territory. We do not have any solutions or mechanisms by which we can further assist schools to manage these further imposts on their budget. As we said yesterday morning, we reluctantly increased these tariffs and, at the end of the day, you can blame the former Labor government for these increases.
We hope to work with schools in reducing their consumption of water and electricity in order to somehow manage their way through these difficult times.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, thank you to the member for Fannie Bay for his question. These price hikes will affect everyone in the community. The tariff increases which will come into effect from 1 January next year will, indeed, have a very profound impact on schools that have already tight budgets. That is why we have chosen to subsidise the public schools system. Instead of a 30% increase in electricity bills, we will reduce that to 15%, effectively, by the use of significant subsidies.
Yes, schools will be impacted across the Northern Territory. We do not have any solutions or mechanisms by which we can further assist schools to manage these further imposts on their budget. As we said yesterday morning, we reluctantly increased these tariffs and, at the end of the day, you can blame the former Labor government for these increases.
We hope to work with schools in reducing their consumption of water and electricity in order to somehow manage their way through these difficult times.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016