Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Albanese government has been in power for less than three months, and we haven't wasted one day to act on climate change and honour our commitment to the people of Australia. The government stands by its commitment to make power bills cheaper because we have a plan to make it happen, but Rome wasn't built in a day; we have to first deal with the 10 years of the coalition's inaction on climate change, a decade of chaos and failed policies.

Today we began the march to change. Today in the chamber we passed the first real climate change bill in many, many years. It's the first step to implementing the Albanese government's mandate to take real and meaningful action to address climate change right now.

The facts are clear. Cleaner energy is cheaper energy and everyone knows that, except perhaps those sitting opposite. The CSIRO and the Australian Energy Marketer Operator's GenCost report recently released confirms wind and solar are the cheapest source of electricity generation and storage in Australia. The Albanese government knows that solar and wind are cheaper. We also know that our Powering Australia policy will see renewable energy rise to make up 82 per cent of the natural energy market by 2030. Powering Australia will deliver 604,000 jobs across our nation. The government is also investing $20 billion in upgrading the electricity grid to allow more renewables into the system to bring costs down.

Australia has the highest uptake in the world of home solar but just one in 60 households has battery storage because of the upfront costs. Up to 100,000 Australian households across the nation will benefit from those 400 community batteries, including one in Corangamite in my electorate. Community batteries offer better economies of scale than household batteries, with lower capital, installation and maintenance costs. These are just some of the mechanisms the Albanese government will use to bring down energy costs. But unlike the previous government, we will ensure that the Australian consumer will always come first.

The Albanese government supports work to prevent anticompetitive behaviour in the market being undertaken by the Australian Energy Regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Energy Market Operator. By contrast, under the previous government, we had nine years of wasted opportunities, denial and delay; nine years of stop-start energy policies, with 22 energy policies abandoned; nine years of hearing from some of those opposite that climate change is not even real. We saw a government attempt to abolish and then water down the Renewable Energy Target.

The previous government constantly undermined both the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. They demonised renewable energy and disparaged large-scale battery storage as being as effective as the big prawn. Who can forget when the previous Prime Minister said electric vehicles would 'end the weekend'? We saw the previous government dragged kicking and screaming to net zero by 2050. We even know that the previous government changed the law to hide recent energy price increases of up to 19 per cent from the Australian public before the last election.

By contrast, Australia now has a government with the right policies to put downward pressure on energy prices, to make energy bills cheaper and to honour its commitment to all Australians.

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