Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Friday night I hosted a forum in Parramatta called Empower Parramatta. It was an attempt to bring people who care about solar power together with business to see whether we can grow the industry in Parramatta.

Parramatta is down from where it should be. Fewer than one in 10 residences in Parramatta has solar. Largely because of our large unit blocks and the townhouses in the area, we are quite low. The numbers have been decreasing. There are 2,766 certified installations of solar power in Parramatta but 2,697—nearly all—were installed between 2001 and 2013. In January last year my electorate had only 48 panels installed. This year in January we had 13 installed; in February we had eight; and in March we had none. We had 13 locally based solar installers in 2013 and today we have one. The purpose of the forum on Friday was to try to reverse that by community support for what is a very important business. The forum was hosted by a wonderful organisation called PolisPlan, who are strategic partners and engineers. Steven and Nil put the forum together. They deal with local systems for water, food and energy, and they are quite an extraordinary duo to have in your electorate. We also had some wonderful community organisers there. April and Tracey from Pingala, Nicky and Tom from the Community Power Agency, Oscar from Sydney Renewable Power Company and Kartik from Parramatta City Council joined us as well.

Around the world at the moment community solar is growing. In Germany, which is one of the biggest solar countries in the world, 51 per cent of solar panels are owned by community schemes—not by commercial schemes but by community schemes where people have come together and made the investment in installing solar power, and they receive a return on their investment and channel that investment back into more installations.

We do not know what the energy market and energy businesses are really going to look like in 10 years time. Anyone who says they do is probably fibbing. But we do know that it is going to be different. If we want the jobs of the future, we need the businesses of the future. That requires not just access to capital but also capacity—that means the networks, the experience, the understanding, the mistakes, getting it wrong, working it out and getting it right. I hope the small group of people formed as a result of the forum on Friday that will drive our first community projects in Parramatta will form part of the base knowledge and experience in Parramatta that will serve us well as this industry is disrupted and forms new business models.

It was a wonderful night with great enthusiasm. We had to throw them out in the end—they stayed for nearly 45 minutes after we closed, and eventually we had to take pity on the cleaners and leave. It was a great night, and I look forward to working with the smaller group. (Time expired)