In order to effectively cutback on their power generation outlays, state governments would do well to subscribe to the federal energy retail law, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said on Wednesday.

Such act would be a clear-cut solution that would immediately arrest the spiralling nationwide cost of electricity, Ms Gillard insisted, reiterating too her calls on "state governments and territory governments (to) work with me in December to get solutions."

The prime minister also encouraged local authorities to rationalise their expenditures on power infrastructures, making sure that every poles and towers erected were worth the dollar that they were built with.

Ms Gillard also dismissed allegations from state and federal opposition that her government was playing politics at the expense of the average Australian household, arguing that the timing of her actions coincides with state-determined agendas that were meant to influence the price of electricity flowing through Aussie homes over the next half-decade.

The measures she advocates for and embraces would redound to the common good of the ordinary Australian, including the $36 billion national broadband network (NBN) roll out, which the prime minister stressed, was not a hallmark of her Labor government's alleged propensity to launch on spending binges.

"We need the national broadband network so our nation doesn't get stuck with second-class technology," the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported Ms Gillard as saying on Wednesday.

But New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell could not help but to wonder why the federal government is rushing on a solution on the issue after sitting on it in the past five years.

Speaking to reporters in Sydney on Wednesday, Mr O'Farrell accused Ms Gillard of "trying to ... absolve her government's responsibility."

The NSW premier also informed Ms Gillard that she missed the point completely by ignoring the fact that junking the carbon tax is the key that will unburden Australians from the high numbers that were printed on their electricity bills.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was in agreement with Mr O'Farrell, recalling that since the Labor Party came to power in 2007 electricity costs shot up by around 50 per cent, purportedly through regulatory interventions that the Labor government failed to challenge.

What was being displayed by the Gillard Government at the moment, Mr Abbott said, was "false, misleading and deceptive conduct."

He too pointed to the scrapping of the carbon as the prime solution there is for the government to arrest the upward trend of high electricity cost.

"I can guarantee that the carbon tax will be gone," Mr Abbott was quoted by Fairfax as saying in declaring that while a Coalition Government may not be able to immediately deliver lower energy cost to Australians, such one move can definitely be expected from him.