MOTIONS

Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (17:40): Well, no wonder people think that the opposition's living in the Dark Ages. Let's be clear about what we inherited and why the program of renewables and batteries for households is so important. Under the previous mob, 24 out of 28 coal plants brought their closure dates forward, four gigawatts of dispatchable energy came off the grid and only one gigawatt came on.

That's the legacy that those opposite left the country with because of their ideological opposition to the cheapest form of energy: renewables. They promised a wholesale energy price of $70 a megawatt hour. They left office with a wholesale energy price of over $280 per megawatt hour.

That has caused ripple effects through Australian families, and we are working hard to make up for that. Instead of facing up to the Australian people and telling them that energy prices were going to go up, they changed the law so they didn't have to tell people. That's the legacy that they left.

Yet in spite of that, we have Australians now able to really embrace renewables. Not every Australian can access the Cheaper Home Batteries Program because it's home owners who can, so there is more work to do to ensure that this program and the benefits that are felt by it can be shared more widely. But let's think about this.

Australia already has more than one in three homes with rooftop solar. People who like their gadgets tell me they love watching how much solar is being generated through their system when it's a nice sunny day. Now what the Cheaper Home Batteries Program does is help households store the solar energy that they generate during the day and use it when they need it most after the sun goes down.

It's just commonsense. It's about putting families back in control of their energy bills, it's about helping households keep more of the cheap energy they generate themselves and it's working. In my electorate of Macquarie, we now have around 6,000 solar batteries across small businesses, homes and community organisations, and that's introducing a massive 184,002 kilowatt hours in usable capacity in the grid.

Basically one in 10 homes now in Macquarie have a battery to back up their solar. Across the Blue Mountains, Emu Plains, Leonay, Emu Heights and the Hawkesbury, we know that families are benefiting. It's a game changer for their energy bills, with many able to save up to $1,000 or even more off their energy bill each year.

With those savings on bills, people will also be able to pay down the cost of their battery faster if they borrowed to do that. Batteries are good for bills and good for the grid because it means we're getting more cheap, fast, safe solar energy available in our homes, night or day, when and where it's needed. I know there were some people at the weekend who were very grateful they had installed a battery because, when the storm swept through and the power went down, for some families their battery was able to kick in and keep their lights on until power was restored.

The Cheaper Home Batteries Program is bringing down the cost of a typical battery by about 30 per cent—you save about a third—and, because of our responsible budget management, more Australians can actually take up the discount. Every battery installed means another household is getting more value from their rooftop solar, and it's another job for local installers and small businesses who are delivering this rollout across the country.

I'm really proud to have spent time with businesses like Blue Mountains Solar and PSC Energy, who used to be called Penrith Solar Centre—it's how some people who've been around for a while might know them. These are organisations that care about the work they do. They're doing it with integrity.

They are great for giving advice about what's best for your home. There are many others like them across our community—local businesses who take pride in their work. Even if you don't have a battery, there are benefits for the whole community, because these home batteries mean there's less pressure on the grid at peak times and lower reliance on expensive generation, and that means downward prices for everybody.

So it's a win-win.