Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier this year, working with democracyCo, I hosted Bennelong in One Room, a deliberative democracy forum that brought participants from across Bennelong to discuss public policy. They were randomly selected and diverse in background, age and political views. This forum showed us democracy at its best. I must truly thank locals for their participation and their time and Emily Jenke and Emma Fletcher from democracyCo for their expert facilitation. Across the three sessions, participants heard from experts, deliberated respectfully and produced thoughtful, practical ideas. It might seem unbelievable to people in this place, but together they sat around the table and found consensus.

At the end of the process, they presented a report—a thoughtful set of practical ideas about how we can tackle the energy transition in a way that works for our community. Their message was clear: Bennelong supports the shift away from fossil fuels, but people want it done fairly and with equity at its heart. They identified priorities like electrifying homes and transport, improving access to solar batteries and electric vehicles, building community batteries, investing in better public and active transport, lifting building standards, increasing urban greening and creating a trusted local information hub. They also asked for four things from government: trust, integrity, accountability and action. This forum reinforced what I've been hearing in Bennelong for years: locals want practical solutions, they want fairness and they want their government to deliver, just as Labor has delivered community batteries across the country, including in Bennelong.

Federal Labor has also funded, with the state government, a $115 million bus depot in Macquarie Park—the first electric-only bus depot in New South Wales—and I've been working very closely with the New South Wales state government to deliver new and better public transport routes across our city. The Minns Labor government have improved strata laws, and I will continue to advocate for more so that renters and apartment dwellers can access renewables and electrification. We've made home batteries cheaper and supported renters and apartment dwellers through solar banks and federal funding for solar for apartments. New vehicle efficiency standards are now in effect, and we have rolled out our Rewiring the Nation fund to modernise our grid.

Importantly, what we are doing is working. Emissions are now almost 30 per cent below 2005 levels, and renewable energy makes up more than 40 per cent of the generation in our main grids. We are on target to meet our 2030 emissions reductions targets, and we're the only party of government with the ambition and the policy to achieve net zero. Thank you to all of those who participated in this incredible forum. I thank them for their time.

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