Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026

Ms SITOU (Reid) (16:36): It is a real shame that the member for Cook is no longer in this chamber, because I wanted to address some of the points that he tried to raise and which were very misleading, like his assertion that emissions have fallen under coalition governments. The key point here is that they fell not because of the policies that the coalition introduced; they fell despite the lack of policies they introduced.

The fall in emissions was because of the Gillard government's carbon price. It was because the market was already moving in this direction, so the industry was already doing a lot of the heavy lifting in reducing emissions. The third reason emissions fell was a pandemic—a total shutdown of our economy.

My hope is that the coalition do not see a future fall in emissions under them based on a total shutdown of the economy. My hope is that they will come up with policies to help drive down emissions, because at the moment the only policy that they do have on the table—and it's hard to imagine whether it's going to continue or be wound back—is their nuclear energy policy.

This is a reminder to everyone that that policy was one that cost $600 billion and was going to jack up the price of electricity for ordinary Australians. So it's of great interest that they have now become focused on reducing emissions and they have become focused on energy prices. My hope is that they will actually start to generate some policies that will address both.

When we came to government in 2022, we laid out a very clear plan to cut emissions and transition to cleaner, cheaper, renewable energy, and we got to work straightaway, on day one. In 2025, voters delivered a clear message at the election. They support Labor's plan to tackle climate change and seize the biggest economic opportunity in our history.

And our plan is working. Emissions are down and renewables are up. That's exactly where we want to be.

Conversely, those opposite tried many, many times to land a climate change policy or an energy policy, but they failed at each and every turn. Their biggest failure was at the 2025 election campaign, when the Australian public gave them a resounding mark for their terrible nuclear energy policy. It was an 'F'—a big fail.

So I hope that they accept some of these lessons from the failures that they've had and that they get to work and come together, get behind net zero by 2050 and get behind the idea of acting on climate change like we have. We know that, when it comes to addressing climate change, some of the key points are around fairness, because it's important that we bring everyone with us on this journey of moving towards cleaner energy.

It's important that we bring households, workers, businesses and communities with us. We need a fairer deal on power bills, fairer access to clean energy and a fairer share of opportunities from the clean energy transformation. That's why we're implementing policies to make the transition more accessible for all.

We've reduced the cost of a home battery by 30 per cent. That has delivered 80,000 home batteries across Australia. As well, we've delivered community batteries across communities and we've supported renters and people who live in units through our Community Solar Banks Program.

Through our Energy Savings Package, we've provided financial support to households, businesses and local councils to invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency measures. We're also making cars, both EV's and petrol cars, cheaper and cleaner. That is what a responsible government—a government that believes we need to act on climate change, drive down energy prices and bring in more renewable energy—does.