Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I speak on this motion, I just want to say that I caught the end of the member for Sturt's contribution on the member for Macarthur's excellent motion on skin cancer and I could not agree with him more. Men have to listen better to what their bodies are telling them. We all have to do better. But prevention is better than cure, and I would like to join with him in what he said about encouraging people to make sure they get the medical check-ups they need and look after themselves when they can. So thank you for that contribution. And thank you, Member for North Sydney, for this motion. I think it's an important conversation to have about how we can do all that we can to reduce emissions and be more energy efficient. Sometimes we focus on the big and really important debates and forget to talk about the other things that we can do, which aren't small but perhaps are more easily digested and should be thought about more than the big issue of how we transition out of fossil fuels into renewable energy. This is part of that.

Before I talk about the government's plan for better energy performance and add some extra thoughts of my own, I wanted to talk about one of the ways we are trying to do this in my local community and have had support from the Albanese government. Carrum Downs, in my electorate, is a great part of south-east Melbourne, but it has to be said that it's not one of the wealthiest parts. It's full of hardworking Australians who struggle with any change in their weekly, let alone daily, cost of living. I think that's partly why households across Carrum Downs have embraced renewable energy, with solar uptake at a higher rate than the Victorian average. More than one in five households across the entire city of Frankston, which is most of my electorate, have solar, but there is no doubt that, for most households, the high price of batteries means that families are still struggling to release the full potential of rooftop solar, putting more pressure on our electricity grid. With the current issues with arising power prices, it is more important than ever that we help households and families to play their part—which I know is what the member for North Sydney's motion was also partly about—doing what they can not just to reduce their emissions but also to reduce their power bills.

That's why I was thrilled when an election commitment was made to have a community battery in Carrum Downs and I was, it must be said, even more thrilled when the Minister for Climate Change and Energy announced that Carrum Downs would have one of the first 58 batteries. The tender is now open for applications to deliver that project, and I have before and do again urge people in my community, businesses, individuals and organisations to look at that tender process and to apply. It is something that is going to make a big difference to the people of Carrum Downs, and I'm very hopeful that, when this rolls out more broadly because the benefits are seen, it will also benefit other people across my electorate.

As I'm sure other government members have said when they have spoken on this motion, we are looking to develop a robust energy performance strategy. There is no doubt that, if we work together with businesses and communities but also all levels of government, local, state, and federal, we can build better homes, we can upgrade existing homes, we can bring better transparency to home energy performance, we can use more efficient appliances in our homes and our businesses and better equipment in our industries and we can find smart ways to manage demand to use less electricity and to use it when its cheapest and cleanest. We do want to empower people to do that, and the assistant minister, Senator McAllister, has announced that she will deliver a national energy performance strategy to bring coordination and leadership to demand-side reform. We have many of the solutions that we need now; we just need the goodwill of all levels of government to work together to deliver them and to make sure that we utilise the technology that will undoubtedly be developed every moment of every day into the future.

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