Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wentworth for this MPI topic today. It is one that is deeply important in my electorate of Lingiari. My electorate of Lingiari is certainly vastly different from that of Wentworth. In truth, we could not represent more different electorates, but what we do share is a commitment to renewable energy and to supporting households with their energy needs. It is an issue that is very important to the Albanese-Labor government. We all know that we needed to transition our energy market to renewables, and we knew that households are absolutely essential in this.

Our Labor government is committed to household solar, and you can see this in many facets of our government policy. We have the Rewiring the Nation agenda, We have the Capacity Investment Scheme. We have $1 billion for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to turbocharge options for household energy upgrades. We have $300 million for social housing upgrades. We have $310 million for our Small Business Energy Incentive, something which will encourage our small businesses to save energy and to save on energy bills. We also have $100 million for the Community Energy Upgrades Fund, which will boost local councils and the work that they do on community energy. I know from talking to a lot of the councils in my electorate that they are certainly looking forward to accessing that.

The answer to today's MPI—what we are doing to move renewables—is simple: we are doing a lot. The $1.3 billion to establish the Household Energy Upgrades Fund is of particular note.

This fund will help more than 110,000 households electrify and lower their energy costs. I am sure the member for Wentworth will agree that reshaping our country's reliance on fossil fuels is a mammoth effort. For hundreds of years Australia's economy, and indeed the global economy, has been shaped by and built on fossil fuels. We know that this needs to change. The future we are passing onto the next generations is at stake. But more importantly, we have the opportunity to build a sustainable, clean, green economy. Labor understands this. We aren't interested in virtue signalling, like some of the other parties in this parliament. We are interested in the hard, painstaking work of reforming our economy.

For the Northern Territory, and Lingiari in particular, we are currently embarking on a renewable energy transition. This makes sense; we have all of the prerequisites needed to do this. We have an abundance of sun, a large mass and a smart bunch of Territorians ready to work in the renewable energy sector. We need to seize the opportunity ahead of us. Indeed, in Lingiari we are working hard to do so.

It is particularly important to look at our bush communities when looking at renewable energy and household energy security. Many bush households rely on diesel generators, which are both costly and hard to maintain. Our houses out bush need rooftop solar, more so than anywhere around the country. When you're along a dirt road, five hours away from a major town, reliable energy is much more than just comfort. In the steaming summers and brisk winters, reliable energy is a matter of life and death.

I see far too many of my mob out bush without access to reliable, renewable energy. This needs to change, and it will change. My office has been speaking with Tangentyere housing in Central Australia about an ambitious pilot program to get solar on town camps, and I know that this is also happening in other places to across the nation. But we can only do this because of the support and the commitment of the federal government. For a long time we had a federal government that was not interested in the hard, painstaking work of reforming our energy system. But not anymore. The Albanese Labor government is ready to seize the opportunity ahead for all of us.

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