Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Christine Milne, addressed the press at a doorstop today to welcome the Prime Minister's call to the states to start examining the issue of power bills, and the focus on the transmission and distribution system's contribution to higher power bills.

"One of the things that came out of the Multiparty Climate Committee was that the Commonwealth government take a lead in the negotiations with the states to look at electricity market reform." Senator Christine Milne said today.

"The Prime Minister today is delivering on her undertaking to actually start engaging national electricity market reform in order to bring power bills for consumers.

"The Greens have proposed a Senate inquiry to look at these issues, to say let's see how we can incorporate energy efficiency, distributor generation, smart grids, how can we actually change the national electricity market rules so that we can bring down power bills for people and also bring down our greenhouse gas emissions and maximise the transition to the low carbon economy.

"I would hope now that the Prime Minister and the Coalition will support the Greens in achieving this Senate inquiry which could then feed into the advisory process to COAG.

The end of the year is the Prime Minister's deadline; I think that we must get onto this quickly, people's power bills are going to be coming in soon.

"At least half of the power bill increase is coming from this gold plating of the transmission system which is being passed onto consumers. We've got to fix it."