National Climate Action Week, Sydney

I want to begin by celebrating the Gadigal people and paying my respects to them and to their elders past, present and emerging. Last week, I met with the First Nations Clean Energy Taskforce, which is doing a great job getting on and implementing our First Nations Clean Energy Strategy, which is designed to ensure that we lift the proportion of Indigenous ownership in renewable energy in our country from 1 per cent to a much higher figure to ensure that First Nations people share in some of the wealth that we're going to create in our country over the next decade or so.

And we're getting on with the job. And part of that First Nations Clean Energy Strategy meeting was with Kate George, whom I recently appointed as the first Indigenous Australian ever to serve on the board of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, who serves with Ruby Heard, the first Indigenous Australians ever served on the board of ARENA whom I also appointed.

So they're also making a difference already, and we're making steady progress. I want to also acknowledge, Penny Sharpe, my friend and colleague, Clover Moore, who's doing a very important job in leading the local government sphere when it comes to climate action and their role in this week, and the Chair of the Climate Change Authority, Matt Kean who's joined us.

I like to run a portfolio of all the talents, and this task is too big to care about how someone votes. When I see someone with talent and passion who wants to help, I grab them. And I grabbed Matt Kean, and I'm very pleased that he's serving his country as Chair of the Climate Change Authority and doing a fantastic job, and it’s wonderful that he could join us this morning.

And welcome to David from California who I last saw at New York Climate Week. It's good to see you in my hometown, and California under Gavin Newsom's leadership, our friend, is doing remarkable things, and I'm pleased- take him our best regards and tell him to keep going, and I'm sure he doesn't need any encouragement. Well friends, I was keen to accept your invitation.

It does come in a busy period. I can't stay for too long – I do have a meeting of the National Security Committee of Cabinet to get to, which I'm sure you understand. But I did want to come and share a few remarks with you.

And really, I have a couple of key themes to touch on in a short period of time. The first one is progress. Steady, deliberate, careful progress is what gets the job done, and it's progress our country is making.

Last quarter, the first quarter in Australian history that we hit 51 per cent renewable energy. And that happened like going broke, slowly and then quickly. It's hard work.

It's grind. It's years of work, and then you see the dividends and you see us move from September being the first month where renewables provided more energy than coal, to then that final quarter being the first quarter in which renewables provided more energy than everything else. And that's progress which is built in the garages and the driveways and the roofs of Australians, and in the areas of regional Australia who seize the opportunities, who take the opportunity.

I know if you read some newspapers, you'd think everyone in regional Australia hates climate action and everyone in the cities loves climate action. It is a lie. But firstly, let me just talk about the households, because that is one thing that Governor Newsom and I have discussed a few times.

We're no poster child in Australia, we've made plenty of mistakes. One we understand is that the road to net zero runs through households, and the fact that as of this morning, 265,000 Australian households have put in a home battery since 1 July. Another way of thinking about it is it took us 10 years to put in the first six gigawatt-hours of household storage, and eight months to put in the second six gigawatt-hours of household storage.

That's the Australian journey, which is being undertaken in the other suburbs and regions, not so much the inner cities. When I did this policy announcement, people came out, the usual suspects, and said this is for the rich inner city elites. It is not true.

Take one electorate by random example, one of my favourite electorates in Australia, Dickson, in the outer suburbs of Brisbane. They have installed, the good people of Dickson, more batteries than the seats of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane combined, the three inner city seats, the electorate of Dickson. This is a regional and outer suburban story, not an inner city story.

Why? Because Australians in regional and outer suburban know that what's good for their pocket is good for the planet. They do believe in climate action, but they also believe in reducing their energy bills, and they know that too when it comes to EV take-up.

Again, I live in the western suburbs of Sydney. I see EVs all around me, every day. Suburban Australians taking them up.

And I'm glad that since we've come to office, we've increased sales from 2 per cent to 14 per cent. Much more to do, much more to do. But progress, again, being driven by Australians every single day.

And again, this is a story too of regional Australia when it comes to a large scale. Now, I don't pretend to you that this is easy or there aren't real issues of community benefit and community consultation that we need – all need to do better on. We have worked hard to improve and we always need to improve to ensure that communities are properly consulted and benefit.

But again, last December I did a tour – take an electorate, a random electorate, I didn't know what was about to happen, but I did a tour of Farrer in South West New South Wales. I went into Hay Council, you never quite know what you're doing, what you're walking into when you go into a council meeting. You could get anything, met with the councillors, graziers, a female mayor but every other councillor was male – you know, very traditional, conservative community.

And brace yourself for the incoming and they said, look, we've got a few issues to raise with you – is there any chance we could make the renewable energy zone bigger? And we're a bit worried this new transmission line that's going in is not big enough. I mean, this is no exaggeration.

Now again, I don't pretend that there aren't- that that reflects every single household in rural Australia, every single community. But it reflects more than what you'd think reading some newspapers, so all this is steady progress. So, this gives me confidence, while there's a long, long way to go, that our 82 per cent renewable target is in reach.

Not inevitable if we make the wrong policy decisions in coming years, then we won't get there. But with the right continued policy calibration we can, and I'm confident will get to 82 per cent renewables which from 33 per cent in 2022, in just eight years, will be a remarkable national achievement. And that helps us get to the 43 per cent emissions reduction and, finally, the 62 to 70 emissions reduction, which the Independent Climate Change Authority has set us as a target accepted by the Cabinet.

Not easy to do. It is and - I admit some of you who know me have heard me say it many times, the Chair's heard me say it so many times he’s sick of hearing it - it's got to be ambitious and achievable. It can be one or the other, quite easily.

It could be ambitious, that's easy to do. It could be achievable, that's easy. Doing both is difficult.

But 62 to 70 is achievable and ambitious. And again, there are so many in the commentary which came out too, oh, they're not on track for their 2035 targets. Well, of course we're not.

If we're on track for our 2035 targets in 2025 or 2026, the target is too low. It's meant to drive behaviour, to drive investment, and I'm confident that's what it will do. And two things to finish on before I have to leave you.

Secondly, we meet in a period of great international instability - we all know that, and great international tragedy. But this is a reminder that the journey we are on is the answer to so many questions. Not just emissions reduction and the future of our planet, which is not a small matter I would submit to you, but to the affordability challenge and to the reliability challenge.

We've done all the work to ensure that we have enough petrol and diesel to get us through, and we've done that work and it's there. But it remains the case that the one form of energy which Vladimir Putin or a Middle Eastern crisis cannot interrupt is the flow of sun and the flow of wind - that cannot be interrupted. And that is one of the reasons why we entered this crisis better prepared than before.

The fact that my first summer as Energy Minister, which we also had an internationally-caused energy crisis, we used 2.7 terawatts worth of gas. This summer just passed, 1.5 terawatts. Again, it means we're less exposed.

We're still exposed, but we're that much less exposed. Gas prices will still impact on energy prices, but less. And similarly, with the impact of coal prices.

And this is also the answer on affordability, because it just so happens that solar energy is the cheapest form of energy not just available now, but available in the history of humankind, and that wind energy is cheaper than any of the alternatives as well. And it's that reliability piece which means when we say we can become a renewable energy superpower, it is a boost to our sovereignty and a boost to reliability, as well as being the right thing to do for the planet.

My final message is, this is a big year for Australia and for the Pacific. President of COP Negotiations for COP31, this is our chance. This is our chance to take what will be- I make no undertakings.

Every COP president says this COP's going to be different, this COP's going to be easy, it's going to finish on time, be no all-night negotiating sessions. I make no such undertakings. This will be hard.

It will require a lot of hard work. I will be spending a lot of time this year talking to people with whom I don't necessarily, on the face of it, agree. Because you don't get a successful negotiation by talking to people you agree with all the time.

But this is our chance to take issues that the Pacific has been trying to get on the agenda for 20 years, and have unable to get onto the COP agenda, on to the COP agenda. And I undertake to do that next week. I have the Talanoa, I think my fifth Talanoa with Pacific climate ministers, about planning COP31.

And we are- I can tell you that the relationship with Turkiye is in good shape and we are working well together, as we should and must, to deliver a successful COP31. And this is even more important in this challenged international time - not less important. Probably harder, to be frank with you, but certainly more important than ever.

And this is a moment for Australia. Some people will say that we shouldn't take this role. Some people say that this is a distraction.

I say that says about them than it does about us. This is our chance in COP31, and also to tell the Australian story, our journey to net zero, our commitment to net zero and our experience in taking that journey through households, which is something we also won't miss. So it's going to be a very big year, a very busy year, and many of you will be involved in some way in COP31.

It won't be held in Australia physically, although the pre-COP will be held in Fiji with a side event for leaders in Tuvalu, which I'm very pleased about and excited about. But we’ll be central to COP31 when it's held in Antalya in November, and that is good thing for our country. And thank you for those of you who supported our journey through the myriad of COP rules about how you choose a COP president and a COP host, and we got there in the end, having been chosen as COP President for Negotiations, which is a good thing.

So, again, I'd love to stay and chat and mingle but, unfortunately, I need to get to Canberra for a meeting of the National Security Committee because the Energy and Climate Minister under the Labor Government is always a member of that committee. Which I think is pretty appropriate because national security is climate change and climate change is national security as well as energy, and we’ve got a lot of work to do.

But progress has been made. We've done a lot. I'm pleased with what we've done so far.

Am I satisfied? No. Should you be satisfied?

No. You should be pleased but not yet satisfied because that keeps us hungry for more, which is exactly what we're going to do. Thanks for your time today.

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.