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

I thank the honourable member for the question and thank her for our recent visit to a wonderful part of the world. One of the things we did was talk about cheaper home batteries. Today is 1 July, which means the cheaper home batteries policy is officially one year old today. I'm pleased to tell the House that 457,439 Australian households have installed a cheaper home battery since 1 July, which means on average 1,255 Australian households have put in a cheaper home battery every single day for the last 12 months.

It also means that—not in per capita terms, not per head terms, but in absolute terms—Australia now has more household batteries than the largest, most populous state in the United States of America, California. That's the achievement of Australians over the last 12 months. When we came to office, home batteries were in one in 60 houses. Now it's one in 17. That's wonderful for those families that are reducing their bills, in many cases to nothing and in some cases getting a rebate instead of a bill, but it's very good for putting downward pressure on energy prices for everyone.

In addition, the honourable member asked me how Australians can access the benefits of renewable energy. It's 1 July today, which also means solar sharer is now available for consumers in New South Wales, in South-East Queensland and South Australia, which is a requirement on energy companies to provide the option of three hours of free electricity in the middle of the day when the solar energy is at its strongest and is most abundant. For those people who take that offer up, Morgan Stanley have found, for example, that some families could save $660 a year, which we on this side of the house think is a good thing. Those on that side of the house are opposed to it. We see this start today and it is a requirement of law for energy companies to deliver it from today, which we expect every single energy company covered to comply with.

It's also the case that from today rule changes the government have requested have come into force. That means that there can only be one price rise each year. It means that there must be a fee-free option to pay. It means that customers whose discounted plans expire can't simply be moved to a higher cost plan. And it means that there can't be excessive fees for late payments. These are all changes that come into force from today because the Albanese Labor government asked for those rules to change, as well as solar sharer coming into force today because we put it into place, as well as cheaper home batteries which have worked for 12 months to help 457,000 Australian households reduce their bills, which is a good thing. We will stand with those households. We will protect those policies. Those opposite would abolish those policies.

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