QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Mr BOWEN (McMahon—Minister for Climate Change and Energy) (14:46): I thank my honourable friend for the question. Indeed, it's been a while since parliament has sat, and there's been a lot of action by the government and by Australian households when it comes to climate change and energy—in particular in relation to households. It's been a while since I've been able to update the House, and I'm pleased to tell the House that now 78,124 Australian households have put in a cheaper home battery under the Albanese government's policy.

This is part of a trend. I'm also pleased to inform the House of recent figures which show that last month was the first month in Australian history when more energy in the main grid came from renewables than coal. We see that as a good step forward; those opposite are probably upset about it.

Of course, this is all encouraging and building momentum for the emissions reductions target of 62 to 70 per cent which this government laid out during the parliamentary break. This is the government getting on with it and the Australian people getting on with it, because that's what the Australian people told us to do on 3 May. The Australian people told us on 3 May to keep going with plans for cheaper renewable energy.

Some would think that maybe they also sent a message to those opposite, but those opposite seemed to get the message to keep going as well. I'm asked what policies are under investigation. The opposition went to the last election with a nuclear policy, which the Australian people did cast judgement on.

That might come as a surprise to the member for New England! It might come as a surprise that it didn't go well, considering the quality of the campaign. The member for Fairfax travelled the world talking about nuclear energy.

He put videos out about that. My personal favourite was 'What can we learn from Hiroshima?' when it came to him selling nuclear energy. The current shadow minister continues in the same vein.

He's spent the last couple of weeks in the United States—good on him, fair enough. He put up an eight-minute video on YouTube about his trip. I watched it so that you don't have to.

You're welcome! Having watched that video, we can tell some things. He did not visit any small modular reactors, advanced modular reactors or micro reactors, perhaps due to the small technical detail that none exist—there were none to see—but he did go to the Idaho National Laboratory.

What his video didn't tell us is that that was the site for the NuScale small modular reactor, which was cancelled last year because it was so expensive and because no-one would buy the power from it because the power was so expensive. That was the small modular reactor that the member for Fairfax had as the image on his website, Time to Talk Nuclear. There is no nuclear renaissance; there is just a renaissance of silly ideas from the opposition.