Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Twelve months since the election of the Labor government, we are busy with the job of repairing the budget, dealing with the structural deficit that we inherited, supporting wage growth and providing cost-of-living relief, particularly in the area of energy. Stable policy in the area of energy and climate change is delivering great benefits to my electorate, and I want to outline six things that we're doing which are providing concrete economic benefits to the people of the Illawarra and Southern Highlands.

Last week we were able to announce the delivery of our election promise to provide community batteries—one in Dapto and one in Warrawong, with my colleague the member for Cunningham. It is a fantastic initiative, part of a $200 million national commitment that will benefit hundreds and hundreds of families in the community.

I've also had the benefit of visiting Sicona Battery Technologies. With world-leading technology, using silicon as the base fuel, they are developing plans for battery manufacture and provision in the Illawarra. Multinational companies are interested in their technology and in them as a supplier of this critical material. They are doing a fantastic job and are looking at starting a new factory up in my electorate.

The third thing I want to talk about is Green Gravity. The Illawarra is well known for coalmining, and when there's coalmining there are mine shafts. When the mine is closed down and no longer in operation, traditionally it fills up with water and it's not used. But Green Gravity are piloting new, innovative technologies to use the battery available through dropping weights into the mine shaft as a means of storing and generating electricity. It is really innovative stuff, and I am very proud of what they're doing.

For skills critical to the transition, $10 million has been invested in the University of Wollongong's establishment of the Energy Futures Skill Centre—absolutely magnificent stuff—together with $2.5 million in grants from the Commonwealth government to upgrade TAFE equipment and teaching aids for renewable energy and training. None of the stuff we're talking about reaches its full potential unless we've got the workforce to work with industry on the transition, so this is really great stuff for the local area.

BOC at Cringila in my electorate are establishing the largest hydrogen production facility in Australia. It'll be core to providing hydrogen as a fuel to heavy industry, particularly heavy transport. This is exciting stuff, boosting our capacity as a region. I've got to say the $2 billion that has been set aside in the hydrogen boost initiative in the budget will really turbocharge this initiative.