ADJOURNMENT

Ms COKER (Corangamite) (13:02): There are few things more important in my communities than keeping people safe on our beaches. For families across the Surf Coast and Bellarine, the beach is part of everyday life. It is where people swim, surf, walk, spend time with friends and family, and enjoy the coastline we are all so lucky to have on our doorstep.

Underpinning this culture are our lifesaving clubs, which do amazing work—volunteering for beach patrols, responding to emergencies, teaching water safety and looking out for the thousands of people who visit our coastline each year. That work takes commitment. It also takes equipment and it takes funding.

I recently visited the Ocean Grove Surf Life Saving Club to celebrate its $19,000 Stronger Communities grant from the Albanese government to install a new solar system. The club has installed 62 solar panels and a new inverter, which are expected to generate around 38,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year. The club has also renegotiated its electricity supply arrangements as part of the project.

Together, those changes are expected to save the club around $18,000 a year. For a volunteer-run lifesaving club, that is a significant saving. What matters most is what the club will do with those dollars.

The money will go straight back into frontline lifesaving. It will help purchase rescue tubes, inflatable rescue boats, boards and other essential equipment that volunteers rely on to keep people safe. So this is not simply a solar project.

It is an investment in the club's future, it's an investment in our volunteers and it is an investment in the safety of everyone who enjoys our beaches. There is also a significant environmental benefit. The new system is expected to reduce the club's emissions by around 46 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.

That is a great outcome for the environment and is also a great example of practical climate action. We often talk about the energy transition in terms of major renewable energy projects, transmission infrastructure and large-scale batteries. Those projects matter, but the transition is also happening in places like Ocean Grove.

It's happening when a local organisation looks at its electricity costs and finds a way to reduce them. It's happening when the same investment cuts emissions and frees up money for the work that organisations do in the community. We are seeing this right across the country and across my electorate.

The Albanese government's Cheaper Home Batteries Program is helping households and small businesses make better use of solar energy, reduce their energy costs and support a more reliable electricity grid. More than 500,000 batteries have now been installed across the nation through this program, and more than 2,500 batteries have been installed across my electorate of Corangamite.

That is thousands of local households and businesses taking part in the transition to cleaner energy. These practical investments to bring down emissions sit alongside the Albanese government's broader work to protect the environment. We have established Australia's first national environmental protection agency and introduced national environmental standards.

We've invested in protecting threatened plants and animals, restoring our waterways and looking after our national parks. We have significantly expanded protection of Australia's marine environment, including through new and expanded marine parks around Macquarie Island, Heard Island and McDonald Islands. And we've redesigned the rules around seismic testing.

That's what communities like mine care about. We are a coastal community. Our economy, our lifestyle and our identity are closely connected to the ocean.

Protecting our marine environment means protecting the places people love, the wildlife that depend on them and the natural assets that future generations should be able to enjoy. The Ocean Grove Surf Life Saving Club brings this back to something simple: good climate and environmental policy should deliver benefits people can see in their own communities. For this club, it means lower electricity bills, lower emissions and more money available for the equipment volunteers need to keep people safe.

I want to thank the people of Ocean Grove, the surf lifesaving club and all lifesaving clubs in my electorate for the extraordinary work they do.