Kara Cook (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When I talk with Bonner families at mobile offices, at community events, at schools and while doorknocking, the issue raised with me as the most pressing is the cost of living. We know that electricity prices are just one expense families face when trying to make ends meet. That is why the Albanese Labor government is helping families with real, practical cost-of-living relief. This includes electricity prices. Through the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, Bonner families are taking advantage of solar to reduce their electricity bills; 1,609 batteries have been installed throughout Bonner—and counting. The program is such a success that, since July 2025, Australians have installed more than 200,000 Cheaper Home Batteries. For Bonner families and small businesses, this has brought down the cost of installing a solar connected battery by 30 per cent. This is practical, affordable, clean energy being generated in our community right now. By 2030, it is expected that the program will support more than two million Australians to install a battery, thanks to the boost in funding of $7.2 billion. This will make it possible for more Australians to take advantage of the solar they already have. It could save families $1,000 each and every year. Locals have been telling me they wouldn't have installed a battery but for the Cheaper Home Batteries Program making it affordable for them.

Just over the weekend, I was chatting with a local family in Cannon Hill, who told me that they're installing both solar and battery this week. They said our incentives just made sense. They would not have installed the battery if it wasn't for the Cheaper Home Batteries Program. Now with over four million solar installations, Australia has more rooftop solar capacity than the entire fleet of remaining coal fired power stations across the country. There are now more Australian households with solar than swimming pools. This means that the energy market, particularly in the sunshine state of Queensland, often has more electricity in the middle of the day than we currently use. This is where the solar sharer scheme comes in. It is another piece of the puzzle towards cheaper energy by encouraging consumers to use the power when it's abundant, taking pressure off the grid that will be saving Australians even more. From July, Bonner residents who sign up to the new solar sharer offer through their energy retailer will be able to ensure that they are running appliances, air conditioners, swimming pool cleaners, charging electric vehicles and using their home batteries during the middle of the day for free.

Australians voted for cheaper, cleaner energy and the Albanese Labor government is delivering. Since coming to office, we've cut emissions to 29 per cent below 2005 levels and added over 18 gigawatts of renewable energy, enough to power six million homes and delivered $12.7 billion in clean energy investment in recent years. A record number of renewable energy projects got the green light last year. In March 2025, the Clean Energy Council said:

The more renewables in the system, the less we need to depend on unreliable coal fired power and gas over time, which will provide much needed cost relief on bills.

Renewables are pulling their weight for our national electricity make up and reducing the wholesale price of electricity. Those opposite promised a wholesale energy price of $70 a megawatt an hour when they were in government. What was it when they left office? It was $280 and Australians have been feeling that pain. They have been feeling the pain of a decade of neglect from the coalition. Then those opposite come here today and pretend it wasn't their fault.

The Albanese Labor government is acting. We're preventing retailers from raising prices more than once a year. We're preventing customers from being charged more than the standing offer price if their initial low cost offer changes or expires. We're also banning excessive retailer charges for late payments and for retail contracts, and ensuring that all customers are entitled to a fee-free payment method.

Through programs like the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, solar sharer, Bonner families from Hemmant to Holland Park, Carindale to Chandler can harness the power of the sun and save on their electricity bills. Our government, the Albanese Labor government is continuing to deliver cost of living relief for all Australians today and every day.

As the member for Bonner there was seeking to reassure the chamber that the Minister for Climate Change, Chris Bowen, has it all under control, she only needed to lean on the dispatch box the way he does when she talked about two million Australians having a so-called cheaper home battery, neglecting to mention somehow that the cost of that program has gone from $2.3 billion to more than $7 billion in borrowed money at the same time that the number of Australians in energy debt has risen to some 336,615 households—336,000 Australian households who cannot afford their power bills today.

How did we get here? We got here because the Albanese government promised, no fewer than 97 times, to lower power bills in Australia by $275. Lots of numbers and statistics here tonight from those opposite. Not one mention of $275, because that was the promise that mattered to Australians. But rather than their power bills coming down under this government, we've seen them go up by 24 per cent in the last year alone. That's the real cost that matters to Australians. It's what they get in their bill, not the wholesale cost that Chris Bowen likes to talk about. The fact is that Australians are paying $1,300 a year more for their power bills than the $275 cut they were promised by this government.

And let's not forget the promise came from the Prime Minister himself. When challenged by a journalist the very first time that the Labor Party announced this commitment to the Australian people, Mr Albanese replied: 'I don't think, I know. I know because we've done the modelling.' Well, that modelling has been thoroughly discredited by the fact that the power prices are through the roof. And for all of the talk, for all of the numbers and statistics that we hear from those opposite, we do not hear an apology for a core broken promise, and we do not hear a plan to lower power bills for Australians. That's why some 336,000 Australian households right now can't afford their power bills, let alone stumping up for one of these so-called cheaper home batteries.

There is no relief for those Aussies out there who are renting, who are locked out of the property market because the Albanese government has overseen an absolute explosion in migration at a time that housing construction has been limited in Australia. There is no benefit in a battery program that has blown out from $2.3 billion to more than $7 billion already, and the way that Minister Bowen keeps fiddling with the pieces of the puzzle, as we're told, should actually cause Australians to lose sleep at night because that guarantees more billions of taxpayer dollars shovelled out the door for higher prices for those Australians left to carry the cost. It is unthinkable that we can continue to do the same thing and expect a different result to what we've seen, and yet that's the plan from our energy minister here in Australia.

The problem is that energy is everywhere in our economy. It's not just a household issue, but rather one that impacts our businesses as well, like those small and family-owned businesses—cafes, the corner store and the like. You walk into a cafe that is air-conditioned. That costs money. The lights cost money. The heating elements in the coffee machine cost money. You're paying for that higher power price everywhere you go.

Importantly, manufacturing businesses, who are huge users of energy in Australia, are the ones doing it perhaps hardest of all. The answer from this government is that you might be able to get a cheaper home battery for your small manufacturing business. In my part of the world, where we've got alumina refineries that are some of the biggest energy consumers in Western Australia, no cheaper home battery is going to offset the explosion in power prices that we've seen in recent years.

I note the crowing from those opposite about the reduction in emissions, completely neglecting the fact that emissions were down 26 per cent from 2005 levels by the time we left office in 2022. So for all of the billions of dollars that have been shovelled out the door in the last couple of years, we've seen emissions tick down, and that exposes the absolute hypocrisy of this government's energy program.

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