Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Recent research indicates it would cost $12 billion over the next seven years to provide fair incentives to help all Australian households electrify. By electrifying, households would save in the order of $3,000 to $5,000 a year. Treasurer, last year alone you spent $12 billion on subsidising fossil fuels. Will you redirect this funding away from fossil fuels and instead spend it on helping Australian households reduce their cost of living?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for North Sydney for her question and for her interest in what I think is a really important objective that we as a government share with the member for North Sydney, which is trying to get people's power bills down. One of the reasons why we have already set aside $1½ billion dollars is that we understand that a big part of the pressures on families is coming from higher energy bills. So we want to do something about that in the near term. We also want to do something about that in the medium term and in the longer term.

The minister for energy, the Prime Minister and others have flagged that we do have an interest in helping households get their power bills down by investing in better ways to get cleaner, cheaper and more reliable energy into their homes. As the Prime Minister said the other day, we are interested in doing that by incentivising people, rather than compelling people. We think that's an important part of the issues that we are thinking through. We share that objective with the member for North Sydney and with other members of the crossbench. I think on our side of the House everyone is interested in how we do that.

Financial help in the near term and help for families, pensioners and households making the necessary changes in the medium term are all important parts of our plan. We are happy to work with the member for North Sydney as we finalise it.