Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Under Labor, the number of Australian families on financial hardship claims has surged by nearly 50 per cent. Australians, including families in my electorate of La Trobe, are hurting. What is the message from this minister, who works part time, to more than 200,000 Australian families struggling to pay their power bills and cutting back this Christmas because of Labor's broken promise to bring down power prices?

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

I thank the member for the question. My message to his constituents and to the people of Victoria is that we will continue to work without reservation to put downward pressure on energy prices by introducing more of the cheapest and most reliable forms of energy.

The fact is that in Victoria the wholesale price of electricity in May 2022 was $233 a megawatt hour; it is today $77 a megawatt hour over the last quarter. The retail increase in Victoria that wasn't known for the 2022 election—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will pause. The member for Cowper was warned within three minutes of the start of question time today. The warning continues right through; it doesn't wear out. If you are on a warning—I don't know why this is so hard—do not interject. It's pretty simple. So, I'm asking to ask you to leave, because you've shown disregard to the chamber.

The member for Cowper then left the chamber.

I'm just asking everyone to show a little restraint.

Member for Lindsay, I'm asking you as well not to interject anymore. The minister in continuation.

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The retail increase in Victoria that wasn't known before the 2022 election, which should have been known, was $61 for households and $270 for small businesses. Six coal-fired power stations totalling 6.8 gigawatts announced their closure under the former government—Morwell, Anglesea, Hazelwood, Yallourn, Loy Yang B and Loy Yang A—with the first three closing in that period. There was no plan to replace any of them. The previous government's big scheme, the Underwriting New Generation Investments program, or UNGI, delivered exactly zero gigawatts for Victoria under them.

By contrast, four gigawatts of renewables and 1.2 gigawatts of large-scale storage have been added in Victoria since May 2022. A further 2.8 gigawatts of renewables and 1.8 gigawatts of storage capacity in Victoria have been selected under our government's Capacity Investment Scheme. So: under our Capacity Investment Scheme, 2.8 gigawatts of renewables and 1.8 gigawatts of storage for Victoria; under their UNGI scheme, zero for Victoria—to be fair, zero for everyone, but, given that the question was about Victoria, zero. And I'm very pleased to report that, as of today, 139,629 Australians have installed a cheaper home battery, and 23,845 of those have been in Victoria, with that state now having 500 megawatt hours of new home battery capacity since 1 July.

So, what our government is doing is delivering for the people of Victoria and repairing the damage of 10 years of denial and delay that the previous government inflicted on the people of Victoria.