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

I thank the member for Newcastle for her question. She, together with her other Hunter Valley colleagues, represents an area which has been crucial to Australia's energy generation and will continue to be so as we move Australia to become a renewable energy powerhouse. No region will be more important than the Hunter in that transformation. Getting more energy generation and more electricity generation is the centrepiece of the Albanese government's approach. We have Rewiring the Nation, which will ensure that we can transition to 82 per cent renewables in the system, because cheap energy is also clean energy. Unfortunately, the former government opposed, and continues to oppose, this investment in transmission.

We have our national energy transformation partnership with the states and territories, which we are negotiating and working on in good faith with our state and territory colleagues. It is very important. I know the previous minister for energy would not have been willing or able to do this. Of course, we also have our important community batteries policy and solar banks policy, to bring on new renewables and to bring on the storage.

But I'm asked about the consequences of a failure to act. That, really, is what we're dealing with: the consequences of 10 years of delay, denial and dishonesty. There are four un-fun facts about the previous government's approach. We know that, under the previous government—

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