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

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Australians are worried. Not only are they dealing with the rising cost of energy, but they're also trying to make sense of headlines that warn us of an unreliable grid that is likely to lead to energy shortages. Why isn't the government doing more to get solar on individual homes and to incentivise landlords to add solar wherever possible? And why aren't we lifting the cap on the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme from 100 kilowatts to 1,000 kilowatts to accelerate the distributed energy resource?

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

I thank the honourable member for her question, although I must disagree with the premise that she put to the House because, in the budget, this government delivered a $1.7 billion package to help Australian businesses, households and councils make the transition to renewable energy. And $1.7 billion is not a small amount of money when you put it to such a cause. It enables households, small businesses and local governments to make the sorts of investments they want to, with some government assistance through low-interest loans and grants, as appropriate, to make those decisions.

The honourable members refers to, in effect, the Electricity statement of opportunities out last week, and it does underline the importance and the urgency of the transition to renewable energy, which is something that some honourable members in the House understand, as the honourable member for North Sydney does, and others do not. These warnings from the energy market operator, as were contained last week's statement of electricity opportunities, are not new. There were similar warnings given in the same statements in 2019, 2020 and 2021—almost exactly the same wording in many instances. The difference is that, in this instance, this government is acting. The previous government had 21 energy policies but couldn't land one, and as a result we saw four gigawatts of dispatchable power leave the grid and only one gigawatt come on—a situation we are remedying.