Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I feel like sometimes there's a lot of negativity in this place, so I'm going to start with some positives. I will start by saying that I am a proud member of the Albanese Labor government and I'm proud to be part of a government that accepts the science of climate change. Not only do we accept the science of climate change; we are acting on climate change. One of the first things that we did when we came to parliament was legislate a 43 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. I am proud that Australia can be a part of the renewable energy transition.

Let's just think about it for a moment. We live on a desert continent. We have rich geological resources under the ground, and a lot of those resources are actually critical minerals that we need in the renewable transition. Not only are we rich with resources under the ground; let's look above the ground. We are a desert continent. We have ample amounts of solar and wind resources, and what do Australians want? They want cheap, reliable electricity. We are really unique and well positioned to be a part of this renewable transition.

One of the statements that I disagree with is this language calling them 'wholly renewables'. The truth is it's renewables plus energy storage plus energy firming. One of the types of technology we use with renewable electricity is pumped hydro. This is where you pump water basically up a hill when the renewable electricity is working and then, when renewable energy is not, like when the sun is not shining, you let the water basically go through a turbine, and then you have cheap electricity that is available at the drop of opening a tap.

There are also these things called batteries. I'm not sure if the coalition has heard of batteries. I know that, when I grew up, we had the phones where you used dial-up. The things that we have now are mobile phones, which use batteries. So many people are using batteries as a part of their lives, and we use them because it means that we can have energy when we need it. You know what? That's what we want to do with renewables. We want to have the ability to store energy so we can use it when we need it. When the opposition talks about baseload electricity, I hate to say that, but it's, like, so 1990s. It's a bit like dial-up internet. I don't know if people remember the days when you would try and connect to the internet to chat to someone on MSN. You'd do that beep-beep-beep-beep-pshhh—and then you actually got to speak to a friend! The truth is we're not doing dial-up internet anymore, and that's because we have hot spots in our phones.

The thing that we see with renewable energy is that we have the opportunity to be able to do energy cheaper, cleaner and in a new way.

I'm just amazed at how antiquated the coalition is. But then, if I think about it, 'coalition', 'coal'—yes, okay. They're putting the 'coal' back in 'coalition'!

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