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

I thank my honourable friend for her question. Of course, the Albanese government's bill relief starts in one week's time—the $300—on top of the bill relief announced in the budget before last. That's $300 for every single Australian with an energy bill. There's no need to fill in a form and no need to apply. It will apply automatically.

Of course, in the medium and longer term, we know that introducing more of the cheapest form of energy into our energy grid—that is, renewables—is good for bills. That's why we're pleased that renewable energy is up 25 per cent since we came to office. That's 8.5 gigawatts. That plays no small part in the fact that wholesale energy prices, which were $375 a megawatt hour when we came to office, were, in the first quarter of this year, $76 a megawatt hour. This is flowing through, as we saw, in the default market offer.

The honourable member asked me what plans we have rejected and why it's important to be upfront. Well, we saw the release of what we'll call, to be very generous—in the spirit of good will—a policy last week on nuclear energy. We saw the sites released. We saw seven sites for nuclear energy, the owners of six of which have said they don't want a bar of it and five of which are in states where there is a legislated prohibition. So the policy failed at the first hurdle.

The Leader of the Opposition was asked about the cost of his policy. I was watching: 'Here we go. We're going to get the figures, the details of the cost.' This is what the Leader of the Opposition said. 'It will be a big bill, no question about that.' Well, that was the detailed costs that we heard from the opposition: a big bill, no question about that. The question for the Leader of the Opposition is: how does a big bill lead to cheaper energy? He hasn't released that. He's got the most expensive form of energy available. They think they know better than the CSIRO, but they won't release their costs—although the Leader of the National Party let the cat out the bag today. He said: 'We know what they are; we're just not going to tell you,' on 2GB this morning. 'We'll get around to telling you when we choose.'

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