Doorstop interview, Kings Park, Perth

Federal Member for Perth, Patrick Gorman: I'm Patrick Gorman, the Member for Perth, including this beautiful part of the world, Kings Park. And it's great to be here with the Assistant Minister for Climate Change, Josh Wilson, a great Western Australian, serving in the Albanese government. And we're also joined by a bunch of enthusiastic electric vehicle users – people who know how great these vehicles are.

I, myself have driven electric vehicle for four years, I was chatting to someone earlier who's been driving one for 10 years, and one of the challenges we still have is making sure that we can get the charging infrastructure we need. I've taken my EV up to Kalbarri and back home again with no trouble at all. But I know that people in my community in the inner city of Perth have trouble if they want to charge and they don't have a garage or somewhere they can charge locally in their neighbourhood. And that's why it's so exciting what Josh is about to talk about, which is about making sure that people can charge their cars where they live, and that we coordinate that across the nation, because these are great vehicles. They're excellent to drive, they're cheap to run, and they do people's bit for action on climate change. And I know in my community here in Perth, people want to act on climate change. They want to be able to take action. And we're supporting them to take action with the initiatives we've already rolled out when it comes to supporting the purchase of electric vehicles and the important announcement that Minister Josh Wilson is about to make, I'll hand over to him.

Assistant Minister, Josh Wilson: Thanks, Patrick. Kaya, good morning everyone. It's great to be here in Kings Park, in Patrick's electorate to talk about some of the work we are going to continue doing to reduce emissions, to give Australians more choice, to take up cleaner and cheaper transport options.

It's been a big week in the climate energy space. We released the National Climate Risk Assessment on Monday that reinforces the importance of taking ambitious action to reduce emissions and be part of that global cooperative effort, and it reinforces the opportunities that we have in Australia to be both a renewable energy superpower and a clean industry powerhouse.

On Thursday, the Prime Minister, Minister Bowen, and the Treasurer announced Australia's 2035 target of 62 to 70% emission reductions on 2005 levels. That is an ambitious but also an achievable target that was recommended to government by the Climate Change Authority, and government has accepted that recommendation. As Minister Bowen has made clear, it's going to be a big undertaking to achieve that amount of emission reduction – you effectively would have to get the kind of emission reduction that will be achieved by decarbonising more than Australia's transport system twice. That's just to give you an idea of the size of that challenge. But we are up for that. The Australian community is up for that, and the private sector is up for that.

The important part of setting that target is the net zero plan, the six sector plans that show us how we can achieve that ambitious target. And of course, transport is a big part of it. We've already made significant progress through the actions of the Albanese government. We introduced Australia's first national EV strategy. We made sure that Australia can benefit from new emission standards for the first time, and that's seen a big jump in the range of different models that Australian households and businesses can choose from now, north of 130 different models, including some much more affordable models that are around that sort of $35,000 mark, which is great.

We've also increased charging opportunities. In fact, we've tripled public charging. There are now nearly 8000 public charging points around Australia, and as a result of that work, in the first three years of the Albanese government, we've seen the purchase of EVs go from being around one in 50 to being much closer to one in 10. And that's what we want to see. We want to see Australian households and businesses have the opportunity to choose clean transport that not only reduces carbon emissions in our fight against dangerous climate change, but also reduces local transport pollution, which is harmful to human health, of course, when people make the change to electric vehicles, they are making the change to a kind of option that is cheaper to run, cheaper to maintain, and cheaper to run, week in, week out, especially when people are combining their electric vehicles with distributed energy resources in the form of home solar and now through our cheaper home battery program.

I know that that will be really exciting for people right around Australia. It will be particularly promising or attractive to people in WA, when you consider the kind of sunny conditions we have today and the fact that while one in three Australians have home solar PV, in WA it is closer to two in five. So, I'm really pleased that today, we're taking that next step to support electric vehicles by announcing $40 million in new support for charging infrastructure. We're going to focus on delivering more fast charging by identifying suitable locations and infrastructure work to support that. We're going to put a particular focus on current black spots, especially in regional Australia, so that people have the range comfort, really, to go further and wider in their electric vehicles. But importantly, we're going to put new emphasis on the delivery of kerbside charging, which is present in lots of other parts of the world, but we haven't seen much of yet in Australia. We think that we can use existing electricity infrastructure, the poles and wires that are spread throughout our cities and towns, and provide more options for people who choose electric vehicles. So today, $40 million from the Albanese government to keep that work going forward, to enable households and businesses to take up cheaper and cleaner electric vehicles.

Journalist: You mentioned that the demand has gone from one in 50 to one in 10. Is that, you know, is that high enough? Do you think for net zero to the net, or do you need to see increase in people transitioning to EVs?

Wilson: Well, we want to see that increase. Obviously, there's a lot of room to go when it comes to the decarbonisation of transport. We've seen a significant change already, if you think about that shift from one in 50 new car sales to one in 10. But we want to see that go further.

Journalist: You mentioned regional WA. Is there any indication as to how much would be spent in regional WA, as to Perth?

Wilson: We'll be working with states and territories to arrange the installation and the sort of the share of the infrastructure between cities, towns and regional areas. So, I'm not sure what the precise breakdown is but as people here will tell you, there's a disparity, as there is in many areas of life, between the availability of the infrastructure in our cities and in our regional towns and in between. And that's a particular challenge in a state the size of Western Australia.

Journalist: So you're hoping that more people in the country would look at getting an EV?

Wilson: Well, that will be one of the focus points of this $40 million we'll be looking at those black spots, and we know that a lot of them are in regional and rural Australia, including regional and rural Western Australia. And we want to support the choice of people in rural, regional and remote Australia - they should have those options. If they want to take up cheaper and cleaner electric vehicles, they should have those options. And that's what we're supporting with this funding.

Journalist: With the demand growing and people making their transition, and the push from governments like yourself, is there any concern that the network wouldn't be able to cope with that demand?

Wilson: The electricity network?

Journalist: Yeah.

Wilson: Yeah, well, we've seen a huge surge in the deployment and availability of renewable energy. I think Australians should reflect on the smart choice they've made. Over the last couple of Federal elections, we've seen a massive change in direction in Australia. It's a change in direction we absolutely need not just to make a contribution to tackling dangerous climate change, but also to undertake a sensible energy transition that needed to occur. And under the previous government, we had nine years where they couldn't manage a national energy policy. We saw coal fired power assets coming to end of life and nothing to replace them. In fact, we saw a diminishment of one gigawatt of generation capacity through the nine years of the Abott-Turnbull-Morrison Coalition Government. We've delivered 18 gigawatts of new renewable energy and storage in just three years, and the investment pipeline for the delivery of new generation is really, really encouraging. At the same time of course, Australians themselves at the household level have taken that action. We are the highest penetration jurisdiction in the world when it comes to distributed solar PV. Solar PV on households. When the Rudd Government was elected, in 2007 only one in 1000 Australian households had solar PV one in 1000, today it's one in three, and in WA it's two in five. And half of all of our renewable energy generation, which has gone north of 40% under this government, comes from that distributed energy, and we know that households want to keep going down that path - the cheaper home batteries, as Minister Bowen will say, each and every day - is galloping along. Well, we've added probably a third of the batteries that were in existence since the start of that program on the first of July. And that's something that we need to see more of.

Journalist: So, just sorry, on Optus. When was the federal government informed about the Optus outage and what had happened?

Gorman: Well, I think, firstly, for the families of those three people who've lost their lives because they couldn't get through to triple zero, I just want to say, I think, on behalf of all Australians, that we extend our sympathies to them. It is absolutely tragic, completely unacceptable. And obviously, like every Australian, I want answers. When it comes to what we know we'll see further information come out from both Optus and from the Minister for Communications in the hours ahead, we will have a full and thorough inquiry into this to get all of those answers as to whether the information was shared at the appropriate time, whether the appropriate actions were taken by Optus, and make sure there is absolute full transparency and full accountability. Because what people have either saw yesterday evening or woken up to read in the newspapers today is absolutely tragic and completely unacceptable from an essential service like a telecommunications operator.

Journalist: And so the information that you do have, what is that? And is it enough?

Gorman: The reason that we've said there will be a full inquiry, is because we want to make sure there are all of the appropriate answers for this. I don't know everything that has happened in this, and obviously we're asking further questions of Optus. The Minister for Communications will make further statements about this later today because what we've seen is both heartbreaking and a complete failure of responsibility from Optus.

Journalist: The WA Government says it hadn't been given information and was urgently seeking more details. And the South Australian Premier has made some scathing comments criticising how Optus has handled the situation – not notifying emergency responders soon enough. What are you your views on how Optus has handled the situation?

Gorman: Well, it's completely unacceptable how they've handled it. Clearly, we've had tragic outcomes because of Optus’s failures, and I want to make sure that we both have absolute transparency and answers on everything that has happened and that this never happens again. It should never have happened in the first place and again, that's why I, just, like my heart, goes out to all those three families that have lost loved ones as a result of Optus’s failures.

Journalist: Do you know any information about the West Australian that died?

Gorman: I'm not in a position to share any information.

Journalist: Do you know how many of the 600 calls that were blocked in WA?

Gorman: Again, the Minister for Communications will put out further information. Obviously, much of that information has to come from Optus. It's clear that the community doesn't think, and I don't think, that they've given enough information fast enough – that is obvious. We want to see all of those answers, but the way to get answers is also to have a full and transparent inquiry, where I also note there are very hefty fines in our current legislation that can apply to operators equally, there may be other processes that commence to ensure that Optus is fully accountable and the full force of the law is applied to Optus in terms of their obligations.

Journalist: How long are you giving Optus to provide those answers? And when do you expect them?

Gorman: The Minister of Communications have more to say a little later today.

Journalist: How can Australians have any faith in Optus now?

Gorman: I understand why Australians who are with Optus, and it's millions of Australians, would be questioning Optus’s commitment to ensuring that they have reliable essential communications, and the ability to call triple zero is an essential communication that is the baseline for every telecommunications provider.

And, when something goes wrong, you need to fix it instantly. That is their obligation. They haven't met those obligations. So, I understand why Australians who may be with them would be, would be asking questions of their service provider. Our job as the Australian government is to make sure that there is a proper inquiry, that where Optus hasn't met their obligations, they have the appropriate penalties applied to them, and that we get full accountability from an essential service provider who have failed the Australian people.

Journalist: And just finally, it might be too early, but is there any discussion to possibly rename the Optus stadium, given what's happened?

Gorman: Look, I think right now, the focus is rightly on these people who have lost their lives, their families, and services that failed the Australian people yesterday. All of those other things, I think I'll leave that for another point in time, but I can also understand why people might be asking questions like that. There's obviously quite a lot of anger out there in the community right now. We've got to do our job as the Australian government, which is to get all of the answers to all of those questions, all of the accountability and make sure that this never happens again.

Journalist: Sorry, just on that you don't want it to happen again. Two years ago, you know, they were at the centre of another outage, not ending in such tragedy like this one, what will come of that to make sure that it never happens again?

Gorman: This is why we've got to ask all these questions. The Minister of Communications will have more to say on that later today.

Journalist: What's your stance on the Burswood racetrack?

Gorman: I've made my stance really clear and open with my community many months ago. So, that's been my position for a long period of time. I recognise that this a decision for the State government, and I'll leave it to them.

Journalist: I've just got one for Josh as well. So, what's your stance on Burswood racetrack?

Wilson: Look, I don't have a view on that. It's a State project, and I understand why local members will be interested in that. It's not a project in my community.

Journalist: Okay, now we know Australia is still in a contest to secure the COP31 next year, and it's on the PM’s list to address in New York. Do you think Australia has done enough to secure this event here?

Wilson: We've put forward a really, really strong case, and it's a strongly supported case. We think that it's time for an important climate event like that to be brought to our part of the world that is, you know, to be hosted by both Australia and the Pacific.

We think we can make a significant contribution to what needs to occur in terms of global cooperative effort to tackle dangerous climate change by hosting COP next year. But we have to let the process unfold. It is a consensus process. We continue to argue our case and also to talk with Türkiye and everyone who is involved in making that decision, and we remain hopeful that Australia and the Pacific will be able to host it next year, obviously subject to some of those conversations that will
happen the next few weeks.

Journalist: Do you think we're close though?

Wilson: It would be a very hard thing to estimate. Closeness is probably, you know, how long is a piece of string? I mean we'd like to see it resolved as quickly as possible because we think that the case that Australia and the Pacific together make for hosting that kind of event is a very strong one, and we'll continue to talk collaboratively, openly, and in good spirit with all international partners, including Türkiye, to try and resolve that in favour of Australia and the Pacific.

Journalist: Yep, and the last one, the PM, will also be pushing for renewables investment which Australia needs to hit those emission targets. Is the government confident it will secure the investment needed to get there?

Wilson: Well, we are confident because, because recent history shows the appetite for investment in Australia. I mean, Australians should remember that we have the best renewable energy resources in the world. I was talking with some people who are interested in wind projects just yesterday, from Italy, and they were making that point. I mean, internationally, it is well understood that our wind and solar resources are the best in the world, and we have a stable investment environment, and we have a government with clear policy support and the sort of the building blocks in terms of investment in transmission and collaborative work between the Commonwealth and the States and Territories to see that deployed, and that's why we've been successful today.

I mean, I think Australians should be proud because of the contribution that they, individually, both households and businesses, have made to that effort. I said before that half of our renewable energy at the moment, comes from those sort of distributed resources, so households in particular, but also businesses, voting with their feet, putting solar panels on their roofs and seeing the benefits of cheaper energy that that brings. But we have also seen 18 gigawatts of additional large scale renewable energy and storage in the first three years of the Albanese government. And we've seen renewable energy generation grow by 45% in three years – that's remarkable progress, but we've got further to go.

Wilson: Thanks very much.