Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia is no stranger to extreme weather: heatwaves, droughts, floods and bushfires. Our community on the New South Wales South Coast has seen our fair share of it over the last few years. We know what it means to have reliable and efficient energy, or, should I say, we know what it means when that reliability fails because of climate change. In the wake of so many disasters, many local people are looking for new ways to climate-proof their homes.

As we move into the next phase of our recovery, we are seeing a new set of questions being asked. The South Coast community saw direct and indirect impacts from this string of disasters, so the question is broader than just asking where or what we build; it's about how we build. It's not just about protection from fire or protection from flood; it's also about resilience from power failures, protection against heat and smoke and protection against mould, mildew and water inundation. We have just witnessed a decade of neglect from the previous government, with the failure to make a real energy plan, the failure to take action on climate change and the failure to address our escalating housing crisis. So these questions should come as no surprise. Well, the Albanese government is not going to make the same mistakes they did. We have already enshrined our emissions target in law, taking real action to address our changing climate. We have already started the path for our Powering Australia plan.

During the election campaign, I was delighted to promise a community battery for the Maloneys Beach community, which will help people in this village reduce their energy cost and reduce their reliance on external power supplies, making them more resilient and better prepared for the future. In the wake of the bushfires, the Maloneys Beach Residents Association identified power and communications resilience as a key theme that local people wanted addressed. They did some research and found that, if they had a whole-of-community buy-in, it would be cheaper and more efficient to have a battery and backup power generators. We agreed, and now we have the Community Batteries for Household Solar program that can help communities, like Maloneys Beach, do just that. I'm really excited to see that come to fruition, but it is only the beginning.

More-efficient homes improve our energy consumption, reduce emissions, improve resilience and improve health. It is win-win, not just for communities but also for government, saving us all money in the long run. It is smart policy for individuals and for the country. With a government that will actually lead the way, we can have a sensible and constructive conversation about improving our energy performance to help us reduce emissions. Instead of hyperbole and hysteria about types of power, we can make Australia an energy powerhouse. This is a real and genuine way to reduce energy costs and drive our transition to emissions-efficient power—smarter, cheaper and cleaner.

We will waste no time. In fact, we have already begun. In October we announced that the Albanese government will deliver the National Energy Performance Strategy, our long-term plan to bring affordability, reliability and sustainability to our energy system. We want to empower people to improve the energy performance of their homes because we know the wide-ranging benefits that will have, not just in times of disaster but all year round. As part of our $15.2 million investment over four years to provide a framework for demand-side action, we released a consultation paper in November so that we can work with all stakeholders to develop a comprehensive energy performance plan, one that will take the pressure off prices, take the pressure off our climate, support efficient energy use and look at the suitability of our targets to drive better energy performance across the country.

What Australia has lacked over the last decade of the Liberal government is a sensible government holding sensible and constructive conversations with the experts about how we can tackle the challenges our energy sector is facing. We won't achieve anything with hysteria about so-called health impacts of windfarms. The science on that is settled. We won't achieve anything with distracting conversations about nuclear power. The science is settled on that as well.

What we must do and must do now is address our changing climate and do what we can. We must prepare our communities for the very real impacts of climate change, which are already happening. We simply have to support locals with cheaper, cleaner and more efficient energy and better energy performance. The Albanese government is committed to doing this without the hysteria, to just having sensible conversations with the experts and our communities.

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