Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks to my honourable friend for the question, and congratulations to her on her resounding re-election. The honourable member asked me about harnessing renewable energy, and that's what Australian households are doing every day, particularly under the Albanese government's Cheaper Home Batteries Program. I think the House might need an update on how that's going. I can tell the member and the House that 16,302 households have now taken up cheaper home batteries in the last four weeks. The policy's been operating four weeks today—16,302 households. And, as the House might have determined by now, that number is increasing by about 1,000 houses a day. That means that those households that are putting on the cheaper home batteries are benefiting, but so is the whole grid and the whole country, because we are building storage. In fact, those more than 16,000 batteries amount to 280 megawatt-hours of storage in our grid. That's two Hornsdale big batteries that we have added just in the last four weeks. That's good for the grid. That's good for everyone. That puts downward pressure on prices everywhere.

The member asked me about alternatives and the need for unity, and of course that's very important. Indeed, both houses are being provided with alternatives at the moment. Last night there was a vote in the Senate. One Nation called on a vote opposing net zero. Now, One Nation voted for that—that was their motion—two coalition senators voted for it, two coalition senators voted against it and 22 coalition senators were outside playing Candy Crush! They didn't want anything to do with it. That's what you want—a bit of moral clarity about the big issues facing our country. Asked are they for net zero or against net zero, two are for, two are against and 22 didn't know. Those twos cancelled each other out. It was a net zero impact on the vote from those opposite! That's the sort of impact we see from the leadership and the team opposite.

I'm going to do something slightly unusual. I'm going to approvingly quote a member opposite. The member for Lindsay, just before question time, was asked about this, and she said: 'Well, this is groundhog day.' She's a hundred per cent right, because we have seen all this before. Nine years in office and they couldn't land an energy policy with 22 different goes. For nine years, we had the National Energy Guarantee, and we had $3 million for a coal-fired power station which couldn't even deliver a feasibility study. They announced the winner of the feasibility study two days before opening the tender for the feasibility study. That was the sort of approach that those opposite took for nine years. Now, three years later, they are no better. In fact, they are worse. They can't even discuss the pathway to net zero because they can't agree on the destination. It just goes to show you they haven't learnt the lesson from nine years of delay, denial and dysfunction, and they would do it all again.

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