Press conference in Brisbane, Queensland

EMMA CORNER: Well, welcome to Petrie, everyone. We’re enjoying a wonderful Queensland winter day. We’re down here to talk about the solar battery program. And today is the day that’s starting the 30 per cent off. So, I’m very excited to be joined by Minister Bowen, and we’re going to talk a bit further about this program. And we’re in an area of Bridgeman Downs where there’s been a high uptake of rooftop solar. And so, these batteries are actually going to make a massive impact to the cost of living in this area.

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, thanks, Emma. Thanks for having us here today in your community. And thanks, in particular, to Robert and Michaelia, for having us in your beautiful house. And today is the day – we’re about to switch on Robert and Michaelia’s battery, but we’re also switching on the Cheaper Home Batteries program for Australia today. Announced during the election campaign, comes into force today. The law of the land and now in operation.

So, every battery switched on from today onwards to 2030 receives the discount. This is so important for households to reduce their bills and their emissions; for the grid, for grid stability; and for people across the system because more batteries in our grid in its entirety is good for everyone, reduces bills for everyone. And also good for jobs and for the industry.

And I’m delighted to be joined today by John Grimes, the Chief Executive of the Smart Energy Council. I want to thank the Smart Energy Council for their engagement all the way through the detailed design, working this policy up in close consultation with industry. It makes for good policy. And, of course, we’ll continue to implement it and monitor it and ensure it’s being rolled out as it should be.

But this is a good day for Australia. Australia leads the world in rooftop solar. Queensland leads with very high rooftop solar penetration. We have the highest rooftop solar in the world, but only one in 40 Australian houses has a battery. That’s because they’ve been very expensive. This 30 per cent rebate makes it an economical choice. It makes it a sensible choice for families like Robert and Michaelia and families right across the country.

If you’ve thought about getting a battery, maybe you’ve had solar panels on the roof for years but haven’t really been accessing the full benefits of solar and batteries together and families who don’t have either solar or batteries but now can make a choice to get one whole system installed at once.

So very good day. I’m delighted to be here in the seat of Petrie to officially turn this battery on, the first battery that I’ll be turning on as part of this scheme, one of the first batteries across all of Australia to be turned on. One of the first families to receive the 30 per cent rebate. It’s a good day. A good day for families, a good day for households, a good day for the industry, a good day for the country. Cost of living relief where it’s needed, emissions reductions, which we need, and maximising Australian capability and success, taking rooftop solar success and turning it into a battery success, now one of the most important home battery markets in the world. With such high rooftop solar penetration and low battery penetration, a big gap to fill, and today we start filling that.

Thanks again, John, for his leadership of the industry. I’ll invite him to give a few remarks, and then we’ll take questions.

JOHN GRIMES: Minister, thank you. Well, today is a red-letter day for Australia – store the sun and save a tonne. It’s giving people access to ultracheap solar energy 24 hours a day, slashing their power bills and putting them back in charge of their energy future. It’s a good day for the market. People like Mark and other installers right across the country, that are doing the work of putting energy control into the hands of consumers. Actually, allowing people to control their energy and absolutely slash their power bills in the process.

We’re also seeing the market absolutely responding. Demand is high, competition amongst products is high, and that is actually leading to falling battery prices, and that’s a really good thing. Quality, well-controlled, professional installers through a well-regulated process, actually unlocking savings and benefits to all households, is a very good thing indeed.

What we’re seeing in Australia is a unique Australian rooftop revolution. This is the Australian way. We’re unlocking the transition, the rapid transition; we’re unlocking bill savings. We’re putting control back into the hands of consumers. And that’s a very good thing.

This program I think, is so important because it will accelerate the transition. It will create jobs. It will bring bill prices down. As the Minister says, our modelling shows that out to 2030 this will – this program will reduce wholesale electricity prices and costs on the grid by about $19 billion out to 2030. You absolutely save if you’ve got solar, if you’ve got a battery, but you’ll also save if you don’t, because that is actually reducing the cost of energy for all consumers.

The revolution, the Australian revolution, the household rooftop revolution, is well and truly underway. This is about cutting emissions, saving money one household at a time. This is applicable to every house in every part of Australia. Join the revolution.

CHRIS BOWEN: Thanks, John. I’m sure any of us would be happy to take questions.

JOURNALIST: How much did you spend on the battery, and how much were [indistinct]?

ROBERT GENTILE: The cost was excessive, but in what I got back, it’s pretty much halved it. Yeah, halved. It was over double that, which made the second battery a lot cheaper. Didn’t have to pay for a converter, didn’t have to pay for the installation; it was just pure battery – seven and a half thousand bucks off that. So, it’s a substantial amount, yeah.

JOURNALIST: How much are you hoping to save on power bills?

ROBERT GENTILE: Zero.

JOURNALIST: Hopefully zero.

CHRIS BOWEN: Pay zero.

ROBERT GENTILE: Pay zero, yeah. Pay zero. I’ll save a lot, yeah. Energy bills, probably two and a half thousand a year, I guess, during the summer when it’s using air-conditioning. But, yeah, so I’m hoping in the summer, zero and zero now. And hopefully, I’ll have enough to go back to the grid to pay for my daily connection fee.

CHRIS BOWEN: Very good. Okay. All right, matters of the day.

JOURNALIST: You’ve announced a review to look at ways to – of ensuring Australians have access to Australian gas. Would an east coast reservation scheme achieve that objective, and do you support an gas reservation scheme for future projects?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, the idea of a review is to review the policy levers available to us. As I said yesterday in Canberra when I announced this policy, we have, at the moment there are three ways. We have the AVGSM, which the Turnbull Government implemented, the Heads of Agreement and the Gas Code of Conduct, which our Government implemented. It’s time to review all three mechanisms to see what works best, what doesn’t work. But our objective is to have Australian gas for Australian users at reasonable prices. And we haven’t been seeing enough of that.

So, we are looking at all the options, Minister King and I, who are jointly conducting the review. As I said yesterday, I’m not conducting the review here in the garage; we’ll run through a methodical process with submissions and consider feedback from industry. By “industry” I mean gas producers, but I also mean heavy industry users, from the community, from a whole bunch of – anyone who has a view that they want to put to government and we’ll consider it carefully and methodically.

This is important. It’s got to be gotten right. You can’t have a dot point in a press release, which others have tried and called it a reservation. We have over the course of the last little period, added 660 petajoules of extra domestic supply as a result of the Gas Code of Conduct, but we recognise there’s more to do.

JOURNALIST: Where are the future gas supplies in Australia, and which projects are in the pipeline?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, there’s a whole range when you look at Narrabri, Surat, other options, Beetaloo is talked about. There’s a whole range. But what we want to ensure is that any new gas supply, particularly – this is a very important point which I think not a lot of commentary has been around on – the Bass Strait gas supply is depleting very rapidly. Every day, we’re getting less and less gas out of the Bass Strait. We can’t pretend that’s not happening, and we need to look at ensuring that the supply that we have, traditionally relied on from the Bass Strait, is replaced for domestic Australian users.

JOURNALIST: One of the issues that the ACCC raised yesterday was that the southern states are increasingly and will be increasingly reliant on Queensland gas suppliers to complement theirs. Do New South Wales and Victoria need to do more to increase their own local gas supplies?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, every state has their own approach. I work with all my state and territory colleagues across the board – Labor, Liberal, Greens, all of them – to get the job done. And each will have their own approach. In New South Wales, there’s the Narrabri gas fields, which have been talked about for a long time. They’re inching closer. Through the Energy and Climate Ministers Council, we are pursuing AEMO powers to manage gas supply, and we’ll pursue that over the coming months. But that is working together.

We obviously – you know, the demand and supply between gas in different states won’t always be perfectly matched. Hardly ever will be. We need to manage that together. And managing it together and collaboratively is what I have done and what I’m committed to keep on doing.

JOURNALIST: Would a domestic gas reservation policy on the East Coast lower prices? Because that’s what we see in Western Australia?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, again, we’re going to work all these issues through. I’m not announcing the results of the review that I announced just yesterday, today – it’s a six-month review. You don’t announce a review on Monday and announce the results on Tuesday. We’ve got six months to work it through. I think it was a pretty important announcement I made yesterday, but let’s let the process work it out.

JOURNALIST: When you’re thinking about the problem, is the biggest issue the supply of gas generally, or is it the proportion of gas that’s being supplied that’s then being exported overseas?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, we have no shortage of gas in total. We’re one of the world’s largest exporters of gas. But I think Australians are entitled to say, well, obviously, the policy settings need to be in place so that Australian consumers – whether they be heavy industry, aluminium, steel, cement or the 5 million Australians who use gas to heat their homes, primarily in Victoria but, you know, spread across the country - have access to that gas or the gas fired peakers.That’s getting the policy settings right. That’s what we’re about.

JOURNALIST: There’s also an issue of – in Queensland or nationally, but with Santos in Queensland buying gas off the domestic market to fulfil their international contracts. When the foundational contracts roll over in the early 2030s, is that a circumstance you think should end?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, I think what you’re asking me to do is to announce the results of the review by saying what I think should happen. You’re right, though – I mean, 2032 to 2034 is when the foundational contracts come to an end. As I made crystal clear, I hope, yesterday, we have absolutely no intention of creating sovereign risk by ripping up existing contracts that we entered into many years ago. If those contracts come to an end, depending on the contract, in that 2032 to 2034 period, In the greater sweep of Australia’s economic history, that’s not too far away, but it doesn’t help us in the immediate challenge between 2025 and 2032. So, the review will be looking at that period 2025 to 2032 and will be looking at 2032 and beyond.

JOURNALIST: The new fuel efficiency standard comes into force today. Do you expect it to have any impact on car prices?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, it came into force – actually, it came into effect on the 1st of January and another element of it comes into force, so that is correct. Let me be, again, crystal clear – the Liberals and Nationals, in the election campaign, ran a ridiculous scare campaign about the impact on prices. Australia and Russia were the last two major economies to introduce these standards. Now, Russia is the last man standing; Australia finally caught up. The rest of the world has had these standards for 50 years, the United States in 1974. The United States, you know, the biggest ute market in the world, they didn’t see any impact on prices. And they’ve successfully managed it for 50 – more than 50 years. There won’t be any impact on prices here as the modelling shows. As Paul Fletcher, when he tried and failed to introduce exactly what I introduced and Minister Catherine King introduced, Paul Fletcher tried to, and he was the Liberal Minister. He failed. He said there’d be no impact on prices. He was right then. He’s wrong now.

JOURNALIST: And I just have one more question – sorry – given AEMO is forecasting a growing role for gas in the energy mix, is there a case for reconsidering the carve out of gas from the Capacity Investment Scheme?

CHRIS BOWEN: No. No, because the Capacity Investment Scheme is designed to underpin us getting to 82 per cent renewables. And the economics of gas and the economics of renewables are quite different. Quite different. I mean, gas, when it’s used, is very, very profitable. Renewables are very cheap and have a very different economic base. And I’ve made this point before – in the New South Wales scheme, LTESA, which the Capacity Investment Scheme is very similar to – in fact, I don’t mind saying is partly inspired by – but the LTESA allows gas. Gas can bid in and compete against renewables in the New South Wales government scheme, which was set up by the Liberal Party and continued by the Labor Party in offers.

Do you know how many auctions gas has won against renewables? It’s a round number. Zero. Can’t compete because the economics are so different. So, no, we won’t be introducing gas into the Capacity Investment Scheme. I’ve made that clear from the beginning.

JOURNALIST: Sally McManus says Labor’s $3 million super tax threshold should be indexed. Will you consider indexing the threshold when parliament is debating the plan?

CHRIS BOWEN: I will leave the Treasurer to discuss the President of the ACTU and those matters. Obviously, the Treasurer has been progressing this and consulting with Sally McManus and others, and he’ll be well placed to give you further commentary.

Okay, let’s turn this baby on.