Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

The government takes seriously the need to have a comprehensive approach to tackle dangerous climate change. In delivering the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, we have committed to providing assistance to Australian households to take practical action to reduce their energy use, to save on energy bills and to make a tangible contribution to reducing carbon pollution. We are bringing forward a national strategy on energy efficiency to provide the coherence and national leadership in this area that has been lacking for the last 12 years—leadership for business, for industry and for households to take cost-effective energy efficiency actions.

I note, today, a new report from the Brotherhood of St Laurence, KPMG and Ecos Corporation emphasising the importance of energy efficiency for households, particularly those on low incomes. We welcome the contribution of that report. It is something that the government understands very well. In fact, we are putting in place some $1 billion of household and community renewable energy and energy and water efficiency measures, which we have announced in the recent budget. Since 1 July, over 2,200 schools around Australia have registered to become solar schools. We very much welcome the great interest that communities and schools are showing around Australia for the Rudd Labor government’s program. We will be providing more funding and more installations of PV solar systems in 2008 and 2009 than in any year in Australia’s history. This comes after—

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