Interview with Adam Shirley, ABC Radio Canberra

ADAM SHIRLEY, HOST: On to here and now and something that affects you day to day, year to year in Canberra. We have a true four-seasons climate; it gets awfully hot, it gets awfully cold, and a lot of homes here aren't built up to scratch with their insulation. The Federal Government is pitching some money in to an ACT program that's already running, and that is to try and raise a bunch of public housing to a minimum energy efficiency standard. Hopefully that means better insulation and lower bills for heating and cooling. Jenny McAllister is the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Minister McAllister, thanks for your time today on Breakfast.

SENATOR JENNY MCALLISTER, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY: It's a pleasure, Adam, good morning.

SHIRLEY: How important is the practicality here of improving what is, at times, rubbish insulation in public housing?

MCALLISTER: Well, you mentioned Canberra's four seasons, and it is one of the really lovely things about Canberra, but it also means that households here live through some very cold winters and some very hot summers, and all the evidence tells us that improving the energy performance of a home can really make a big difference in terms of the affordability of heating and cooling, and also just making those homes more comfortable for people.  And the challenge for people living in public housing is that it's often housing that was built a long time ago when we didn't have minimum requirements for energy efficiency. And often those tenants aren't in a position to bring their own resources to put in place the upgrades that will be necessary to make their homes more comfortable.

SHIRLEY: Yeah.

MCALLISTER: That's why we set up this program, and we're really pleased to be partnering with the ACT Government in rolling it out.

SHIRLEY: The estimation of the $7.2 million is that it will improve 5,000 public housing properties. How was that number arrived at, and are you confident that money will cover that many places?

MCALLISTER: The ACT Government has been running the first stage of this program, and so they've got a bit of an evidence base about how much it's going to cost and what they would like to do. Their indication to us is that partnering together we can get through around 5,000 properties, and we're really hopeful that this will see a substantial improvement in the lives of public housing tenants here in the ACT.

SHIRLEY: And how soon will the improvements happen with the money being announced? I guess there's always that question over announcement versus delivery.

MCALLISTER: You're quite right, and we're really keeping a focus on that because we know that people need these upgrades and we know that they can make a real difference when they're put in place, especially at a time when people are thinking about their energy bills. So we expect them to start in 2024 and the ACT Government tell us that they can conclude it by 2026, so it's a program that runs across a number of years.

SHIRLEY: Do the improvements happen and then basically the ACT invoices you? I mean I know I'm boiling that down to simple terms but give us an idea of whether the funding sits there as a pool or whether you pay it once the job's done.

MCALLISTER: We'll have a range of payment arrangements in place with the ACT Government, as we ordinarily would when we partner with them, but essentially we are kicking in to expand a program that the ACT Government already has in place, and that we know can work. That's actually been the core of the approach in designing this program right across the country, is to look for the programs that are already there. States and territories run public housing and have deep relationships with community housing providers. We want to rely on their relationships, their experience, and their expertise to roll these programs out.

SHIRLEY: And with regards to the insulation part of it, is this purely what the money's for? Are we talking draft proofing, potential efficient energy supply like solar panels on public houses? What different modifications might we see out of the money?

MCALLISTER: The ACT Government, as I think you know, has minimum standards for rental properties, and that includes very particular standards around insulation. That's really important in a climate like the one that Canberrans experience, and so a lot of this money will go to upgrading public housing so that it meets those minimum standards that have been put in place.

SHIRLEY: Sure, but insulation as well as double glazing or other insulation measures – because there are a variety of them as you know that can be put in – and often public housing tenants cannot afford the higher ticket items that reduce their bills.

MCALLISTER: At the moment, the ACT Government is conducting an audit of the properties to understand what changes can be made that will best support tenants. We want to put in place the most cost effective interventions. A lot of the advice is that insulation is the most cost effective of the interventions we can do, but the ACT Government is also auditing properties to see what other appliances might be improved or replaced, having a look at things like heating and cooling arrangements, whether or not stoves or ovens are efficient, having a bit of a look at their hot water arrangements; all of these things are in scope in the audit that's presently underway.

SHIRLEY: Senator Jenny McAllister is Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy. My name is Adam Shirley with you on ABC Canberra Breakfast at a quarter to 8. As Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Jenny McAllister, you're well aware, I think, of controversial laws that the Government has put through, “sea dumping laws” as they're dubbed. ACT Senator David Pocock, amongst others, is highly critical of what the Government has done here, and says basically allowing exporting more CO2, dumping it into the sea in our region for carbon capture and storage research is tantamount to giving a green light to the gas industry. If you've got climate change credentials you want to spruik, was it right for Labor to push through these laws as I mentioned?

MCALLISTER: We had a really long debate about this in the Senate, Adam, and I had a very long conversation in that context with Senator Pocock. This government has put in place some really stringent requirements through our Safeguard Mechanism on all of the large emitters across Australia, and it was really important that we did that. For a decade we had a government that did very little on climate change, and it trashed our international credentials. We need to put in place the regulatory arrangements that mean that if these big emitters take steps to reduce their emissions, the steps that they take are properly regulated, and that's what this bill was all about.

It was about making sure that in the circumstances where there's a proposal for a trans-border movement of carbon dioxide, we do have a proper regulatory arrangement in place. That's important for the environment, but it's also important because it allows Australia to meet our international commitment. We're part of an international treaty that requires us to regulate these kinds of trans border movements of carbon dioxide. We've never had any to date, but we want to know that if someone brings an application to government and says they want to do this, we'll have a proper environmental impact assessment in practice in place.

SHIRLEY: It's not just Greens Senators and David Pocock that have a very different view. There are others in environment research and climate change research who say that basically this is doing the bidding of fossil fuel companies, giving them the opportunity to expand their polluting projects, including gas. Who's right?

MCALLISTER: Thanks for the question, Adam. I think there's always going to be robust public debate about how we approach climate change, and that's actually a good thing. It's an incredibly important issue, and the community should be involved in the discussion about it. The thing to know is this, that over the long term we are going to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and towards a much greater reliance on renewable energy. Our government anticipates that by 2030 we'll reach about 82 per cent renewables. But that still leaves a significant part of our energy system reliant on fossil fuels, and part of that will be reliant on gas in the medium term, and we're going to need to have - 

SHIRLEY: I guess the question there is whether -

MCALLISTER: - sufficient supply.

SHIRLEY: The question there is whether there's enough incentive for clean energy, pure renewable energy to make up that shortfall in the medium term, or whether there's an allowance of gas to keep filling that space.

MCALLISTER: We know that the most cost effective form of new energy are renewables, and we expect that that's where we'll see the biggest investments in the energy market in the coming decades. We're in fact already seeing that in the investments that are coming through in the market. But in the medium term, there is going to be a role for gas, and if we're going to have gas projects, we need to have emissions requirements in place on those projects. That's what the Safeguard Mechanism did, and it was very important that the government, and indeed the Parliament passed those laws back in March.

SHIRLEY: Assistant Minister, we really appreciate your time. Thank you for it today.

MCALLISTER: That's a pleasure, Adam, thanks for having me on.

SHIRLEY: That is Senator Jenny McAllister, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, on ABC Radio Canberra.