Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the election campaign I was pleased to campaign for a community battery in the suburb of Dickson, within the electorate I represent. A few weeks ago I was excited to be at the launch, or the switching on, of that battery with the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen; the ACT Chief Minister; and the ACT environment minister, Suzanne Orr. This battery enables households in Dickson who don't have the capacity to have a battery themselves to store more of the energy generated by solar panels and keep that energy so we can use more of it and put it back into the grid. It enables the storage and sharing of energy, and, in a very practical sense, our community owning our energy future. That's what the energy transition looks like when it's working right here in a suburb like Dickson and in places all around this country.

Our parliament is meeting at a time of great global uncertainty, and people in my community here in Canberra are feeling deep concern about the situation globally but also feeling the impacts here, and are worried about our energy security and fuel security. So this is a great example of where the renewable energy transition helps us to have more control over our own energy and our energy sovereignty. What's important is that people who have less capacity to afford some of the personal renewable items need to be supported to be part of that transition—and that's exactly what community battery is about.

Here in Canberra, the electric vehicle discount, cutting the fringe benefits tax and import tariffs on eligible electric vehicles, has helped drive a surge in EV ownership across Australia and particularly here in Canberra. Here in the ACT, the ACT government have also provided their own incentives. This has meant that more Canberrans than ever are driving electric, and I believe we are leading the country in that regard.

On home batteries, the Cheaper Home Batteries Program has now supported over a quarter of a million installations—that is a landmark number—helping all those Australian households to store energy that they've generated themselves. That is energy independence for a huge and growing number of Australian families.

On large-scale renewables, project after project has been ticked off—offshore wind zones declared, solar and wind farms approved, transmission corridors moving through planning. The pipeline is filling, and it is delivering more and more energy. We're getting on with the huge transition to a renewable future. As I mentioned, at a time when we are faced with uncertainty, these renewable energy sources that we have right here in Australia, in abundance, are a huge benefit to our community and a huge advantage in us making that transition—and, at the same time, they ensure we have control over our energy sources.

But it's really important that we don't ignore the green divide. Our government has been working hard to ensure that, when it comes to that transition, no-one is left behind. At the moment, the people who aren't feeling the pinch of the higher petrol prices are people who could already afford an electric vehicle, or those who aren't sweating on quarterly electricity bills are those who already have solar on their roof. But we need to make sure that the clean energy transition is accessible for everyone, and I know that people in my community want to be part of that as well. It's important to them. At the moment, renters can't put solar on a roof that they can't own, and most people are unlikely to be in a position to afford a new EV, regardless of some of the fantastic incentives that we've provided. So this is a problem that we want to continue to work on, and there's a geopolitical reason that it's urgent as well.

Our renewable resources—solar, wind and hydro—cannot be caught up in these global conflicts in the ways that the traditional fossil fuels that need to be shipped around the world can. That is another reason why it's critically important that we focus on the transition to renewables and ensure that no-one is left behind in that transition.

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