Press conference in Perth, Western Australia

AMBER-JADE  SANDERSON: I want to thank, in particular, Minister Bowen for being here today. Of course, the Federal Cabinet is here having their meeting in Western Australia, and a great indication of the strong relationship between both the State and Federal Governments. And I want to acknowledge Lewis, the owner of Solar Group, for hosting us today, and local members.

Today we are announcing that the State and Federal Government battery rebate schemes will be aligning to provide a $5,000 rebate for Synergy customers, $7,500 for Horizon customers, for up to 100,000 people.

Originally the State rebate scheme was designed to support 20,000 customers with a $5,000 rebate for Synergy, with a no interest loan scheme. The Federal Government during the election period made a fantastic announcement of a $2.3 billion investment in residential household batteries across the country.

We've been working closely behind the scenes to make sure that we can align our schemes, and it essentially means that five times more people will have access to the scheme, to the State's rebate, but also to the no interest loan scheme, which is a really important part of Western Australia's scheme.

The no interest loan scheme will provide support for up to $10,000 of no interest loans for households of $210,000 and below. That's about four in five households in Western Australia. That $10,000 will largely cover the gap between the cost of the battery and the rebate. It can also be used for solar panels and upgraded equipment that are associated with the battery.

The Government has appointed an administrator for the scheme called Plenti. They were appointed via a procurement process. They're experienced in administering rebates and the no interest loan schemes in other States. It will be a single point of contact for customers and consumers to access both a no interest loan and the State and Federal rebates.

There will be very strong accreditation requirements around retailers and installers. There will be enhanced inspections from building and energy electrical inspectors to make sure that these are safe.

The primary principal policy really is to ensure that we are ensuring household bills stay low. We are ensuring grid stability and resilience. But we're also ensuring consumer protections upfront and foremost of the rollout of this important rebate.

We know that solar in Western Australia has long been an important part of our electricity grid. We've worked over the last few years to help stabilise the grid so that we can improve and increase the amount of solar panels on the grid.

Those who receive the rebate in Western Australia will be required to be a virtual power plant ready, which means that they will enter into an agreement largely with Synergy. At times they will be required to drawdown on their battery power and will be compensated well to do that. An important part of that scheme is that there is a no worse off guarantee, that no household will be worse off, in fact they'll be a couple of hundred dollars per year in a better position just from those rebates, plus they'll have lower power fees.

This is a great scheme and I'm very, very thankful and pleased that we've been able to work closely with the Federal Government to align the schemes, to make it easier for consumers to make sure that we get more access to batteries, essentially up to 100,000 across Western Australia. So this is a really important part of our transitioning out of coal by 2030 for the Southwest Interconnected Grid.

I'll hand over to Minister Bowen and then Lewis will say a few words and I'm happy to take questions.

CHRIS BOWEN: Thanks, Amber-Jade. Well, we promised cheaper batteries at the election and today we take another big step towards delivering cheaper batteries for the people of Western Australia. I'm delighted to join with Amber-Jade to support her announcement.

The two schemes, the Federal scheme and the Cook Government scheme, are different, but we've worked to make sure that they're complementary, that they work well together.

And 1 July is now not long- not far away, it's a few weeks away, and so it's great that Amber-Jade and I can announce today how well the schemes will work together. Put the Federal scheme, which is a 30 per cent discount on your typical battery, together with the generous rebates of the Cook Labor Government, and the people of Western Australia have a wonderful option to store their renewable energy.

If they already have solar panels, really store that energy to get the most out of it at night. If they don't have solar panels, to take this rebate and make a decision to get the whole benefit, solar panels and battery together.

So, I'm delighted to join with Sam Lim, the best member Tangney's ever had, and Tom French, the best member Moore's ever had, and my State colleagues, to really announce this next step in delivery for the people of Western Australia.

We know that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, but the rain doesn't always fall either, although it has been falling rather dramatically in Perth over the last 24 hours, but we drink water every day because we can store it, and we can store renewable energy as well, and batteries, household, community and grid scale, are the key to storing that renewable energy.

We know our Federal scheme will support 1.1 million new home batteries between now and 2030. And not just home batteries, of course, small business qualifies, up to 50 kilowatt hours. That's a very big battery. And community groups and not-for-profit groups as well, so right across the board.

So this a great day. I want to thank Amber-Jade for her leadership and her partnership. We've worked closely together to make the two schemes complementary.

I will soon be issuing a final version of the regulation, which I'll sign subject to Her Excellency the Governor-General's approval, it will then become the law of the land. It doesn't need legislation, it will all be done by regulation. That provides the industry and the community with certainty that they need to plan and to deliver after 1 July.

Just before I hand over to Lewis I just want to separately announce the next steps in the Bunbury Offshore Wind zone, which is so important for Western Australia's energy future.

As you know, in the last term we consulted on Bunbury Offshore Wind zone, declared an area smaller than the original one we consulted on, which is how the consultation's meant to work, opened applications and today I'm announcing that we had four applications for licences, and I have made a preliminary decision to issue one licence to Bunbury Offshore Wind North, to ask two other proponents who overlap in their licence application to work together to come up with an agreed distribution, that is Bunbury Offshore Wind South and Westward Wind, and I have at this stage declined to issue a licence to the fourth applicant, although they will now have 30 days to talk to us about their application and see whether that decision can be revisited.

This now, if the licence applicants accept the licence, now begins the process of further consultation with the community, with First Nations people, industry plans to be developed and further feasibility work to be done.

We have always been clear offshore wind will not be up and running tomorrow or next week or next year. This is a longer-term project but one which is vital. Western Australia's economy is going to grow very solidly between now and 2040, it will need new sources of energy.

There's plenty happening onshore but offshore is a useful complement to that. So this is a good opportunity to update the people of Western Australia and also on the other side of Australia, and I'm also announcing today I've issued an extension of 90 days to the Novocastrian Offshore Wind proponent for the Hunter offshore wind zone as they finalise their commercial arrangements.

So, a good day for batteries in Western Australia, a good for Western Australian households. What's good for your bill is good for emissions. Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, it's the lowest form of emissions form of energy and storing renewable energy for the night means households can drive their energy bills down, real cost of living relief today.

So I'm going to ask Lewis just to say a few words on behalf of the people hosting us today, the industry, and then Amber-Jade and I will take questions.

LEWIS SHEPPARD: My name's Lewis Sheppard, L-e-w-i-s, S-h-e-p-p-a-r-d. I'm the National Sales Director for Go Solar Group, which is one of Australia's leading wholesale installation and engineering solar companies.

This news is what we've been waiting for. There's been a lot of speculation from the industry but this is fantastic news for our industry and we will see significant growth in our industry for sure, and I encourage the young people of today to work in the solar industry because we need more people to be able grow in the way that this news is going to help us grow.

So it's a great industry to be in. I've been in this industry for 18 years and I believe it's great news for all. I would advise everybody to just be a little bit patient as installation time may take a little bit longer whilst we adapt to the current structure. And I'd advise that you get the best advice and the best products and make sure your house is suitable for solar, or if you've already got an old solar system from 10 or 15 years ago, chances are you may want to take advantage of the additional rebate to upgrade that so you'll be able to charge your battery.

But yeah, it's great news for us. Yes, it's taken a little bit of time but the timing was good because of the time of year, it hasn't really had much of an effect to us as an industry having this delay, but now we can all finally plan ahead and get ready for July 1st. Thank you.

JOURNALIST: Can we just ask, just on the plea for patience, how long are you expecting those delays to be do you think?

LEWIS SHEPPARD: At this stage it's too early to tell but I'd anticipate, depends on who the provider is. If it's just a local guy and he's just doing one or two jobs a week then maybe a couple of weeks. For the larger retailers I'd anticipate probably up to a couple of months once it gets up and running.

But our position will be to recruit, recruit, recruit and train, train, train to make sure that, you know, we do provide a reliable service and not make people wait too long.

JOURNALIST: What's the demand for inquiry been like? I'm sure it must have gone pretty high given both announcements.

LEWIS SHEPPARD: Very high, yes, very high. So, and as the industry we've just had to say, "Well this is what we think's going to happen", but we can now actually tell all these people that, "Yes, it's happening as per what the Government promised", and I can imagine that phones are going to go crazy across Western Australia from tomorrow onwards.

CHRIS BOWEN: Great. Other questions?

JOURNALIST: Minister, yeah, just to confirm, sorry, WA people will be able to claim both rebates for a State and Federal level, is that right?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yeah,

JOURNALIST: And are there any States that are enabling that?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yeah, so Amber-Jade  of course will add but that's effectively what Amber-Jade's announcing today, that she has worked to make sure the two schemes are complementary so that you can get both rebates if you qualify. As I said at the outset, the rebates set up are different, so there's different criteria, but what we've done, Amber-Jade has done in particular, is work to ensure that they're complementary, and so that you can work to get both rebates, and that really drives down the cost.

And just to add to your question about interest, I can tell you that there have been 75,000 hits on my Department's website in the last 10 days on the criteria. I told Amber-Jade this morning it was 60,000, which was accurate at the time, but it's now 75,000. I think that shows real interest on behalf of the Australian people in this new program, and in particular with the two programs working together.

Your question about other States; New South Wales has a rebate scheme. Minister Sharpe and I will be having more to say about that quite soon. There's also a small scheme in the Northern Territory. These are the State and Territory schemes that we're working to complement.

AMBER-JADE  SANDERSON: Yeah, I mean essentially we've maintained the $5,000 rebate for households in the Synergy customers and 7,500 for Horizon customers. And what we've done is we've spread the State's contribution across more households to maintain that $5,000, so essentially topping up the Commonwealth's contribution.

The really important aspect of our scheme, and it's an important characteristic that other schemes don't have, is the no interest loan component which will allow low-income households to access a battery when previously it would be completely unaffordable.

We know that power bills are one of the biggest imposts on household budgets and, you know, previously rebates haven't necessarily supported lower income households. So this will really support low-income households to bridge that gap, to be able to store their own energy and then use it when they need to.

JOURNALIST: Speaking of low-income households, it's not available for apartments, or it wasn't at the time, is that still the case?

AMBER-JADE  SANDERSON: Well look, it's complex, and it's really on a case-by-case basis. So depends on your arrangement with the strata company, whether you have an individual bill and the location of the solar equipment. So it will have to be on a case-by-case basis for apartments. But certainly it is available for households.

A couple of the key differences of the two schemes: The State scheme is purely for residential batteries and households. The Federal scheme will support some businesses and community groups, for example. So they won't necessarily get access to both, but the vast majority of households will get access to both.

The $210,000 income threshold will accommodate four out of five households in Western Australia. And I do want to say you don't need to rush. Companies have been preparing, as Lewis has showed us, but you don't need to rush. There are 100,000 potentially rebates for State and Federal rebates for customers to be able to achieve. So you don't need to rush, you don't need to do it today or this week. You can wait and we want to smooth out some of that activity.

JOURNALIST: What about renters?

AMBER-JADE  SANDERSON: Yeah, so we are supporting landlords to install batteries. Where landlords so  it's one battery per household. So where landlords can demonstrate a longer-term tenancy of around 12 months or more, then they will be eligible for the rebate.

JOURNALIST: On a separate issue, the Prime Minister was full of praise this morning for the West Coast's gas reservation policy. How has that enabled this Government and this State to transition into renewables, and do you think that the East Coast needs to adopt something similar?

AMBER-JADE  SANDERSON: Well every State has to make their own decisions based on what's best for their community and for their States and for their industry.

Western Australia moved some time ago to adopt the local gas reservation policy and guaranteed local supply for households and businesses. At the time it was very controversial, it was heavily criticised by the Liberal Party. It's now just become part of the energy landscape. It's been good for industry, it's been good for certainty for industry around energy security, and it's been good in helping keep control of some of those energy prices.

You know, it is essentially a resource owned by the people of Western Australia, and it would be an absurd, I think, scenario to be then importing more expensive gas.

So it has been an important policy to secure our energy supply, but gas is going to be an important part of our transition into net-zero and into renewables. And the recent Northwest Shelf decision, for example, does guarantee that local supply and secures local gas supplies.

JOURNALIST: Minister, do you mind if I get your response on that? Again, does the East Coast need that or would that reservation policy on the East Coast help with that transition?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well Minister Madeleine King and I working together have delivered 640 extra petajoules of gas for the Australian market. That's a much more effective, if you like, reservation than anything the Coalition took to the last election, and the Western Australian model's a very good one for Western Australia. Minister King and I will soon embark on the process of reviewing the various elements of gas regulation and Gas Code of Conduct, the [indistinct], et cetera, and we will consider what is the appropriate policy step for the next phase.

As I said, 640 petajoules more Australian gas for Australian users thanks to actions of the previous term of the Labor Government. That was the right thing to do because we do believe that Australian gas should be used by Australian consumers. And we did have some very tough conversations with gas companies, very tough, both Minister King and I.

It's fair to say we did not get a standing ovation from the gas companies when we said we were going to introduce the Gas Code of Conduct, but it has worked. And if you're going to be fair to everyone, we've worked together. Companies have signed on to the Gas Code of Conduct and have delivered more local gas.

Is that exactly the right model going forward? Well, that's what a review is for, just to see if there's any calibration necessary, but we've already delivered the sorts of policies which have that [indistinct].

JOURNALIST: Are there elements that you could copycat?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, that's what a review is for, to assess the right model going forward, for the whole country. Amber-Jade herself said different States have different models. Queensland's got a model, different to Western Australia's but different to the other States as well. That's fine. We've got to have policies appropriate for the whole country and that's what that review will assess.

JOURNALIST: Can I just ask, the latest quarterly emissions [indistinct] basically the trend in Australian emissions have flatlined since 2020, what gives you confidence we're actually on track to continue cutting and meet our 2030 targets?

CHRIS BOWEN: So as I said on the weekend, those figures are mixed in my view. There are some encouraging signs and there's some signs about, some indications about where we have much more work to do.

So encouraging is the reduction in industrial emissions of 5 per cent, lower down from 2021. That shows our policy's working, in particular the safeguard reforms which are delivering have delivered already as much emissions reduction as equivalent to 30 per cent of Australia's domestic aviation in their first year. More to do but encouraging.

Electricity emissions were up in 2024 but the first quarter figures that we've seen are very, very encouraging now with renewables hitting record highs and emissions at record lows.

We had some issues last year with low pumped hydro results because of shortages of water, particularly in Tasmania and elsewhere.

So these things are not a linear journey. You know, we have really encouraging news and we have indications of what more we have to do. For example transport, transport is an ongoing challenge. Transport emissions way up after the COVID lockdown, understandably enough. But it underlines we have more to do.

We've introduced the New Vehicle Efficiency Standards which came into force on 1 January. Absolutely no impact on the 2024 figures. Didn't come into force until 1 January, and not even I would argue that they've had much of an impact yet. But they're going to have an impact over years, not weeks or months.

So more to do, but the most comprehensive figures are the ones released at the end of the year, the Department of Climate Change forecasts which are prepared by the Department and I release, which last year showed us on track for 42 per cent emissions reduction, that's not 43 but it's getting very close, and way up from what we inherited, the nine years of delay, denial and dysfunction we inherited from our predecessors.

JOURNALIST: Just coming back to that gas reservation policy. So I appreciate you have a review to undertake for it.

CHRIS BOWEN: Yep.

JOURNALIST: Would you expect some kind of reservation to play a key role in bridging that gap?

CHRIS BOWEN: The idea of a review is that you look at --

JOURNALIST: But you surely must have some kind of idea or otherwise you wouldn't be undertaking a review if you didn't have some preliminary thoughts?

CHRIS BOWEN: You don't do it-  what we don't do is determine an outcome and then hold a review. That's not how Minister King and I do business. You do a review, then you have an outcome. That's what we're going to do.

JOURNALIST: There were concerns of industry after we first heard about the battery rebate that people were delaying their planned purchases to take advantage of the subsidy, and I know you're saying don't rush, et cetera, but are you confident that the sector is robust enough to make it through any longer demand cycles?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yeah, and we've worked closely on that with the sector. So we announced our different  rebates have been announced at different times. We announced our rebate in April for a July 1 start date. That's lightning speed for a Government program to be up and running and for all the regulations to be put in place, the IT systems to be built, the safety compliance mechanisms to be put in place. We've done that. We've done that.

We also announced when we put our announcement out in April that if you put a battery in now, as long as you don't switch it on, you don't get your certificates until 1 July, it's covered. So we didn't want people cancelling their orders.

The sector, the industry tells me by and large that that has worked and that they are managing lumpiness. Yes, there is some lumpiness. There will be people waiting for 1 July, I understand that, and that's unavoidable, but what the sector has done is seen a very big positive upside of both Governments' policies and are working to implement that. They're not focussed on the lumpiness in June, they're focussed on the opportunities in July and August.

And we're very clear too, this is a highly regulated sector, as it should be. This is one of the most regulated sectors in the country. The only batteries that can be installed have to be on the approved list. The only people who can install them are registered and licensed installers, electricians. This is the right balance. It does mean that there'll be some people have to wait for a while for a battery. But that's the right policy mix to ensure safety as we rollout this important initiative for Australian households.

JOURNALIST: There were some  on that one, there were some concerns from within the industry that there would be cowboy operators installing this, the phrase like pink batts 2.0 was thrown around a couple of times as well.

CHRIS BOWEN: Well pink batts, to be clear, and to be frank, was an unregulated industry. This is one of the most highly regulated industries in the country.

You can't install a battery unless you're licensed, regulated and approved and certified. That's the case under both schemes, certainly under- we've made it an absolute requirement. You can only put a battery in that's on the list.

And there are several regulators here, you've got the Clean Energy Regulator at the Federal level, you've got Solar Accreditation Australia at the Federal level, you've got the Clean Energy Council which has a regulatory role, and then you've got the State electrical regulators as well across all the States and Territories, and none of them are taking a backward step. None of them are letting anyone cut any corners here.

So hence, as I said, yes, that might mean people might have to wait a while for a battery but it means when it is installed they'll know that it's by a regulated, certified licensed installer, and it's a battery which has been tested and is on the accredited list.

JOURNALIST: Thank you.

CHRIS BOWEN: Great. I reckon that's a wrap.