Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. How is the Albanese Labor government working with households to modernise and rebuild our energy grid after a decade of neglect?

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

I thank my honourable friend for the question, and, more importantly, I thank her for the absolutely outstanding work she does as Special Envoy on Climate Change and Adaptation. I'm very honoured to have her as a member of our team.

The honourable member asked me how the Albanese government is working with households, and I can say to the House 225,531 cheaper home batteries have now been installed since 1 July. And when you consider that the average size of an Australian household is 2½ people, that's well over half-a-million Australians—more than the population of the ACT—who have benefited from reducing their energy bills by up to 90 per cent. That is increasing by about 1,000 households a day, and 42 per cent of those households are in rural and regional Australia. In Queensland, 55 per cent of the cheaper home batteries that are going in are in rural and regional areas. So this is very much a regional and rural story as well as being a story of the outer suburbs. But the whole grid—every single Australian—benefits when we flatten out demand with more Australians storing their cheap renewable energy from the middle of the day for the night. That helps the grid.

The honourable member asked me about the decade of neglect. It is, of course, the case that we have had a lot of work to do to repair that damage. Over the decade of the Liberal government, we saw four gigawatts of dispatchable power leave the grid and only one gigawatt come on. I can tell the House that since we came to office, in May 2022, we have actually added 7.7 gigawatts of dispatchable large-scale power, and that's not even counting the cheaper home batteries that we've installed. That's a lot of repair work done after the period 2018 to 2022, when we saw the member for Hume announce a billion-dollar program which delivered not one single watt—not a kilowatt, not a megawatt, not a gigawatt—to the energy grid.

The member for Hume was told that the Snowy 2.0 scheme was running two years late, and he didn't tell the Australian people. I can tell the House it is now 70 per cent complete, repairing the work of the member for Hume. The member for Hume knew there was a 20 per cent increase in bills, which he hid. Is it any wonder we saw an unknown Liberal MP say on the weekend—I'm going to sanitise this, Mr Speaker, out of great respect for you and the House. I'm going to make the language parliamentary. The member said, 'Everything the member for Hume touches turns to'—custard. He was a disaster as energy minister and he was a disaster as Shadow Treasurer. The definition of insanity would be to put someone with a disastrous track record into the top job, hoping things will be different.

Government Member:

A government member interjecting—

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

That's not us. That's his side. And we know the member for Hume, himself, said at the election campaign, 'You know, the best indicator of future performance is past performance.' Well, that's a hundred per cent right. That's why we on this side of the House wish the member for Hume all the warmest best wishes for this week. We've fully got his back.