I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) 1 July 2026 marks one year since the Government launched the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, providing a discount of around 30 per cent on the cost of a typical home battery; and

(b) in that time, more than 450,000 Australian households have installed a cheaper home battery;

(2) commends the Government on one year of the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which has delivered real cost of living relief to hundreds of thousands of Australian families and small businesses;

(3) welcomes the Australian Energy Market Operator's findings last week that these batteries are already 'helping to moderate prices during evening peaks and to support grid reliability and security as coal plants withdraw'; and

(4) supports the Government as it continues to make clean energy more affordable for all Australians.

When I first tabled this motion, more than 450,000 cheaper home batteries had been installed right across Australia. Today that number has already passed 500,000. In just a matter of months, tens of thousands more Australian households, small businesses and community groups have taken up this program. And what does that say about this program? It says Australians want cheaper energy, they want more control over their power bills and, when we make clean-energy technology more affordable, Australians are ready to embrace it.

I've seen this firsthand in my own community of Bonner. More than 4,300 cheaper home batteries have already been installed in Bonner, making us one of the leading electorates in Queensland for installations. Behind every one of those batteries is a household making a practical decision about how they can bring down their power bills and get more value from the solar energy they are already generating.

Just over a year ago, the Albanese Labor government launched the Cheaper Home Batteries Program. The idea was pretty simple: we would help bring down the upfront cost of a typical home battery by around 30 per cent so more Australians could afford one. For many households it is a game changer, saving families $1,000 or more on their energy bills each and every year.

Anyone who drives around my community knows just how many rooftop solar systems there are in Bonner. Across Brisbane's east and bayside, there are solar panels on roof after roof. Australians have already embraced the opportunity to generate their own cheap, clean energy. The next step is helping them keep more of it. A battery means the solar generated while you're at work or the kids are at school can be stored and used later. It is common sense and it is working.

Those opposite like to suggest that programs like this are somehow just for wealthy people in the inner-city suburbs. The facts tell a very different story. More than three-quarters of the batteries installed through this program have been in outer suburban and regional communities. This is not an inner city story; this is a story about the suburbs and the regions right across our country. It is a story in communities like mine in the outer suburbs of Brisbane. The Australian Energy Market Operator has found that these batteries are already helping to moderate prices during evening peaks and support grid reliability and security as ageing coal-fired power stations withdraw.

Labor's Cheaper Home Batteries Program is good for bills and good for the grid. We make better use of the enormous amount of solar Australia is already producing and we help bring down the costs of electricity at times when it is most expensive, so, even if you don't have a battery or even solar panels, you benefit from a stronger, more efficient energy system.

Energy policy can sometimes seem complicated. We talk about generation, transmission, megawatts and wholesale markets, but for families in the community that I represent the question is much simpler: what does this mean for my power bill? Labor's plan is about more cheap, clean energy and a better deal for Australian households. So, when I look back at the motion that I submitted just a few months ago and see a figure of 450,000 installations and know that today it is over half a million, I'm proud that that original figure is already out of date. This program is practical. It is incredibly popular and, most importantly, it is delivering real savings for Australian families right across the country but also for over 4,000 families in my local community of Bonner. I commend the motion to the chamber.

Is the motion seconded?

I second the motion.

I say respectfully to the member who's moved this motion that I hope that she has made sure that all the batteries in her electorate have been installed properly. I say this incredibly seriously because one of the things that this motion doesn't address is the way that this program has been rushed out. Already the reporting that we've seen, on the ABC and in newspapers, is about the potential risks of the rollout. That's why those of us on the opposition have called for an immediate audit of this program.

There are two reasons why we need an immediate audit of this program. The first is around safety. This program was meant to cost the taxpayer around $2 billion. It's now in the budget forecasts that it's going to cost $8 billion. The money was rushing out the door so quickly that the department ran out of money to be able to fund it, so they had to go to the Clean Energy Regulator—who was meant to be overseeing and supervising the scheme—to fund it.

I can't ever remember where the regulator has been called in to finance a program—because the money's running out the door so quickly—because the department has actually run out of money. That should ring alarm bells to start with. What should ring alarm bells is that, every time we have quizzed the minister or sought documents from the minister about how the program's safety checks are going, we get nothing.

We have to remember that one of the organisations which are doing the safety checks is the Smart Energy Council. People say, 'What would be wrong with the Smart Energy Council doing it?' Well, the problem with that would be that they actually fund the government. They pay money to the Labor Party for political campaigning, so how can they independently look at this program when they're a funder of the Labor Party? They pay donations to the Labor Party, and they're being asked to oversee this. So, when a program like 7.30 starts asking serious questions around safety, I think it's time for an independent audit. When the Australian has on its front page a fellow who's had a battery installed, but because it's been stored in an area where the temperature drops and then rises, he's had to put a blanket on his battery, it's because he's worried about what the implications will be for the integrity of that battery.

We can sit here and say, 'Oh, isn't this wonderful? We've been throwing money out the door—$2 billion to $8 billion,' but there's also got to be questions raised around whether the government is sure, then, that people haven't been abusing this. Does it have proper integrity? The last time we had a program that went from $2 billion to $8 billion—where the regulator had to fund it, where it looked like the government had no idea what it had embarked on—it was a scheme which, sadly, the government ended up having to pull in, and we ended up having a royal commission into it. That royal commission said that what the government needs to do when it rolls out programs is make sure that it does so in a systemic way—that there are proper checks and balances, that the regulator is watching closely and that there's proper auditing going on. Now, that is not what we're seeing with this program. It's all very well to come in here and just sing and dance about the government spending $2 billion originally and that going to $8 billion, but, if you're going to do that, make sure you've got the proper checks and balances in place otherwise it can end up being very, very costly for the households that you are trying to help.

Well, no wonder people think that the opposition's living in the Dark Ages. Let's be clear about what we inherited and why the program of renewables and batteries for households is so important. Under the previous mob, 24 out of 28 coal plants brought their closure dates forward, four gigawatts of dispatchable energy came off the grid and only one gigawatt came on. That's the legacy that those opposite left the country with because of their ideological opposition to the cheapest form of energy: renewables. They promised a wholesale energy price of $70 a megawatt hour. They left office with a wholesale energy price of over $280 per megawatt hour. That has caused ripple effects through Australian families, and we are working hard to make up for that. Instead of facing up to the Australian people and telling them that energy prices were going to go up, they changed the law so they didn't have to tell people. That's the legacy that they left.

Yet in spite of that, we have Australians now able to really embrace renewables. Not every Australian can access the Cheaper Home Batteries Program because it's home owners who can, so there is more work to do to ensure that this program and the benefits that are felt by it can be shared more widely. But let's think about this. Australia already has more than one in three homes with rooftop solar. People who like their gadgets tell me they love watching how much solar is being generated through their system when it's a nice sunny day. Now what the Cheaper Home Batteries Program does is help households store the solar energy that they generate during the day and use it when they need it most after the sun goes down. It's just commonsense. It's about putting families back in control of their energy bills, it's about helping households keep more of the cheap energy they generate themselves and it's working.

In my electorate of Macquarie, we now have around 6,000 solar batteries across small businesses, homes and community organisations, and that's introducing a massive 184,002 kilowatt hours in usable capacity in the grid. Basically one in 10 homes now in Macquarie have a battery to back up their solar. Across the Blue Mountains, Emu Plains, Leonay, Emu Heights and the Hawkesbury, we know that families are benefiting. It's a game changer for their energy bills, with many able to save up to $1,000 or even more off their energy bill each year. With those savings on bills, people will also be able to pay down the cost of their battery faster if they borrowed to do that. Batteries are good for bills and good for the grid because it means we're getting more cheap, fast, safe solar energy available in our homes, night or day, when and where it's needed. I know there were some people at the weekend who were very grateful they had installed a battery because, when the storm swept through and the power went down, for some families their battery was able to kick in and keep their lights on until power was restored.

The Cheaper Home Batteries Program is bringing down the cost of a typical battery by about 30 per cent—you save about a third—and, because of our responsible budget management, more Australians can actually take up the discount. Every battery installed means another household is getting more value from their rooftop solar, and it's another job for local installers and small businesses who are delivering this rollout across the country. I'm really proud to have spent time with businesses like Blue Mountains Solar and PSC Energy, who used to be called Penrith Solar Centre—it's how some people who've been around for a while might know them. These are organisations that care about the work they do. They're doing it with integrity. They are great for giving advice about what's best for your home. There are many others like them across our community—local businesses who take pride in their work. Even if you don't have a battery, there are benefits for the whole community, because these home batteries mean there's less pressure on the grid at peak times and lower reliance on expensive generation, and that means downward prices for everybody. So it's a win-win.

I welcome the motion from the member for Bonner. The government doesn't get everything right, but they've done a fantastic job with the Cheaper Home Batteries Program. I called for a home battery subsidy in the lead-up to the last election, and I was delighted when the government committed to a 30 per cent subsidy for households. The response was massive. Uptake rapidly outpaced expectations, with over 1,000 batteries being installed every single day. This is world-leading stuff—truly astonishing figures.

In the last financial year, nearly 60 per cent of household-scale batteries across every country in the world, except for China, were installed right here in Australia. We crossed the 500,000 home battery mark last month. With batteries all the old arguments against renewables—that wind and solar are unreliable and need lots of expensive gas backups—just fall away. Batteries make the grid more stable. They make households energy independent, and they cut power bills. Australia's benchmark electricity price fell by up to 10 per cent a few months ago, specifically because battery storage was displacing the need for expensive gas peaking.

One of my constituents shared her battery story with me recently. When she moved into a 1970s home in Gordon last year with poor insulation, her household electricity bill jumped to $525 in one month—ouch. Fearing a $6,000 annual bill, her household installed solar panels and a 32-kilowatt-hour battery, making use of the 30 per cent subsidy. Well, their bills dropped to an average of $126 per month in winter and $40 a month in summer. That's a huge, huge difference in power bills, and they're expecting to recoup the costs in only 4½ years. She tells me that she 'couldn't be happier' and she says, 'It's a great feeling every day, to feel more self-sufficient and to know that we can live more comfortably with less stress.' With this subsidy, Australia has seized the global battery revolution with both hands, making the most of falling prices, improved safety standards and better resource efficiency to accelerate the rollout that we need to power our economy this century.

The rapid uptake shows that Australians have an appetite for electrification. They love this stuff. We see it again and again. Electrification schemes, when they exist and they're well communicated, are more successful than anyone imagined. We saw it in the early days of the feed-in tariffs for rooftop solar, which kicked off what now sees Australia as the largest per capita solar user in the world. We saw it also with the discount on new EVs, which was more expensive than Treasury had anticipated because it was so popular. Now, beating expectations like this is not a sign of failure. It's a clear sign of success. The government should heed these findings and keep creating such schemes. It recently announced the extension of the solar scheme for households to be available to farmers, community facility managers and business owners so that they too can install solar systems. This is excellent news because it tackles what people call the missing middle of electrification. Solar panels can now go on factories, warehouses, farm sheds, dairies and other industrial buildings. Those enormous empty roofs could be covered in solar panels, and this scheme update will help make that happen.

The next step is to ensure that renters and people living in apartments can also benefit from electrification. One important option is to make plug-in solar panels legal. You could just buy these simple appliances off the shelves at Bunnings, chuck them on your balcony or in your backyard, plug them in and save Aussies up to $370 a year on energy bills. They're legal in the UK, Germany, Spain and other countries. It's an easy win, just sitting on the shelves at Bunnings. If the huge success of the Cheaper Home Batteries Program is anything to go by, the government shouldn't waste any more time waiting.

Good policies are the ones people see working in their homes and feel in their household budgets. The Cheaper Home Batteries Program is exactly that kind of policy. Since 1 July last year, the Albanese Labor government's Cheaper Home Batteries Program has delivered more than 500,000 batteries for households, small businesses and community groups by cutting the upfront cost of a typical battery by around 30 per cent. Households with rooftop solar are saving up to $1,100 every year. It is extra room in a family budget when every dollar counts.

More than one in three Australian homes have rooftop solar panels to generate cheap power during the day, but families need that power the most after sunset. A battery bridges that gap, storing energy so it is ready for dinner time, homework time and the evening peak. The equation is simple. Generate it during the day, store it, use it at night and pay less. Families in my electorate of Holt already understand this. There have been 3,729 solar batteries installed in Holt, providing over 116,000 kilowatt hours of usable capacity. From Hampton Park to Narre Warren South all the way down to Cranbourne and Clyde North, households are taking control of the power they produce and the bills they pay. But batteries do more than lower individual household bills.

When the Australian Energy Market Operator compared 10,000 homes with solar and batteries against 10,000 homes with solar alone, during the evening peak, homes with batteries drew 73 per cent less electricity from the grid. Let that sink in—73 per cent. That means less strain when the system is at its busiest, guaranteeing better reliability and putting downward pressure on power prices for everyone. That tells us that more than three-quarters of these installations are happening outside inner-city communities. Holt families aren't interested in ideological energy wars. They just want to know: If a policy works in practical terms, does it lower bills? Does it keep the lights on? On both tests, this program delivers. It helps households squeeze every drop of value from solar panels that they've already paid for, all while supporting thousands of jobs for electricians, apprentices and small businesses across our suburbs and regions.

Those opposite might talk this down, but let's be clear: a program delivering half a million batteries is not a disaster. A program cutting bills and stabilising the grid is not a disaster. A program that has doubled its installer workforce is not a disaster. It is delivery. The experts agree. Both AEMO and the CSIRO confirmed that renewable energy backed by storage is the lowest cost way to replace ageing coal and build the reliable grid Australia needs. What is the coalition's alternative? Is it to spend billions keeping old coal stations alive and pursuing nuclear reactors that would take years to build? We haven't forgotten their record. During their decade in office, 24 out of 28 coal plants announced closures, and, when benchmark power prices were set to surge just before the 2022 elections, they deliberately hid that fact from the Australian people until after polling day.

The choice today is clear. The coalition wants to freeze this progress and strip away household support. The Albanese Labor government is helping families lower their bills right now by backing local jobs and building a stronger, cheaper grid for the future. It is good for households, it is good for the grid and it is good for Holt homes.

I commend the government for the Cheaper Home Batteries Program. More than a year ago, the government provided Australian households, small businesses and community organisations with a discount of about 30 per cent on eligible battery storage systems. Those batteries allow for storage of abundant cheap solar energy generated during the day for use at a time when electricity is more expensive. There have been more than 500,000 battery installations since the program started, reflecting the enormous scale of household demand when the economics stack up.

The member for Bonner is right. Australia's energy transition is delivering real savings. However, at the moment these savings are generally flowing in the direction of those who are in a position to access the energy transition. Renters, apartment dwellers and people living in other forms of multioccupancy housing are locked out of the scheme, which requires pairing a battery with rooftop solar on a property that the applicant can modify. Vulnerable households, low-income households and renters are still missing out.

Around one-third of Australians rent, and they're more likely to experience energy hardship than home owners. But only 11 per cent of rentals have solar, compared to 44 per cent of home owners, and only six per cent of apartments, compared to 39 per cent of detached or semidetached homes. So for too many people the possibility of accessing free electricity harvested from the sun hitting their roof is at the whim of a landlord with little financial incentive to invest in solar and storage. This is a gap that the Commonwealth should help close, working with the states, and I call on the government to consider more reforms to facilitate household electrification.

Firstly, the government should, and could, expand direct Commonwealth finance and incentives, like the Household Energy Upgrades Fund, so that landlords have a genuine incentive to install solar, batteries and energy efficient appliances in rental properties.

Secondly, we should work to make portable plug-in solar panels legal to install and use in Australian homes. Small standalone solar units attached to balconies or used in backyards and plugged into power points can produce enough power to run a fridge, a television and other appliances during the day. They're already legal in the UK, in Germany, in Spain and in New Zealand; they should be legal here too. Researchers have estimated that Australians living in capital cities could save between $226 and $372 every year with a plug-in solar system. A kit that costs about $1,000 would pay for itself in three years and would keep working for 20 years. And renters could take it with them when they move.

Thirdly, the government should adjust tax policy settings to reward landlords who bring their properties up to a high energy performance standard. And, finally, the government should work with the states towards a national target for rental homes to be fully electrified by 2040.

The states are already showing what is possible when there is a clear road map. Victoria's Gas Substitution Roadmap sets out that, from 1 January 2027, all new homes and commercial buildings will be built all electric, while new minimum energy efficiency standards for rental properties will come into force shortly after that. The ACT has also committed to phasing out fossil gas entirely by 2045. These approaches are encouraging, but they highlight the need for national coordination and direction.

The Cheaper Home Batteries Program has proven that when the Commonwealth gets the settings right, Australians will respond. We are now a world leader in rooftop solar, but the benefits of rooftop renewables are unevenly and inequitably distributed. Too many of the 2.5 million Australians who live in apartments or units are still missing out. Let's make sure that the benefits of cheap electricity from renewables extend to every Australian home, not just to those people who are currently lucky enough to own the roof over their heads.

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.