QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Mr BOWEN (McMahon—Minister for Climate Change and Energy) (14:40): I appreciate the question from the honourable member for Melbourne and, more importantly, I appreciate the pragmatic approach she brings to climate discussions in this House, calling for climate action, and the positive contribution she's made in her time in this House already. Last week, we saw signs of progress in the government's plans.

On Tuesday, we saw the announcement from the energy regulator, under the legally obliged release of the default market offer, of significant reductions in energy bills across the relevant jurisdictions. That is required to be released under law unless the minister of the day signs a law to keep it secret—which I have never done and would never do but one of my predecessors once did just prior to an election.

What it showed was reductions in energy bills from a modest one per cent to up to 10.7 per cent for residences and up to 20.9 per cent for small businesses. We see this as good progress, reducing energy bills by spreading more of the cheapest form of energy through a commonsense plan to roll out renewables backed by batteries across the country. On Friday we saw—of interest to the honourable member—emissions fall as well.

In 2025, electricity emissions were down four per cent, which is good progress. And emissions intensity in our energy system—that is, the amount of carbon produced per kilowatt—is the lowest it has ever been in our country under those figures. This is very much a story of batteries, because we know that the impact on energy prices mainly comes from coal and gas, which is expensive, in the night-time.

And what we're doing is transferring a lot of that cheap renewable energy from the middle of the day to the night through batteries. This is an Australian story and one that Australia can be proud of. The fact that Australians have installed 423,717 batteries since 1 July is a global story.

That is 12 gigawatt hours worth of storage. In Australia we've seen 10 per cent of the world's battery capacity added in our country. Only two countries have added more battery capacity than Australia over the last 12 months, the United States and China, and in per capita terms Australia leads by a long way in terms of battery capacity.

In fact, 30 gigawatt hours of household battery capacity were added in all of 2025, and we have added 12 gigawatt hours just since 1 July. The honourable member asked me what would slow all this. A return to the policies of the past would slow all this.

I'm always grateful to the shadow minister when he makes clear, as he did all last week, that he opposes a popular policy like Cheaper Home Batteries. He would prefer to go back to the UNGI scheme, which was the signature scheme of the Leader of the Opposition, Underwriting New Generation Investment. It should have been called 'Unfortunately no generation involved', because we have added 12 gigawatt hours but do you know how much the UNGI scheme added?

Zero—not one kilowatt hour. That was one of their— (Time expired)