E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
RAPID CREEK, NT
WEDNESDAY, 25 FEBRUARY 2026
Subjects: Cheaper Home Batteries, inflation, Lee Point development, NT Administrator
LUKE GOSLING: Morning, everyone, and welcome to Rapid Creek. I want to thank Lorenzo for having us here at his wonderful home this morning. Thank you, Greg from Eco Tech, who’s been the installer of this great battery here. And of course, thank my good mate, Josh Wilson, who’s come up from Fremantle in WA. He is the federal Albanese Labor Government’s Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, and a good fellow. He’s come up here to provide some good news in the way of an update, but also some important stakeholder meetings that we’ll have in Darwin and Palmerston today. If there’s one thing the Territory’s got in abundance, it’s beautiful sunshine, and so many Territorians have already taken advantage of that and put solar on their roofs, and we know that that’s saving Territory families over $1,000 year in their reduced power bills. But with our Cheaper Home Battery program, what we’re seeing is a massive pickup in those. Territorians are using that scheme to put one of these batteries into their house, saving them much more, even in Lorenzo’s case, not having a power bill at all. This is a really practical measure from the federal government to put downward pressure on those power bills and on the cost of living in general. So just want to again, thank Lorenzo, thank Greg and his team for the good work they’re doing throughout darling pharmacy and territory to get these battery systems in hooked up to rooftop solar and saving territory families thousands and thousands of dollars. Thanks, Josh, for coming up.
JOSH WILSON: Thanks Luke, and it’s great to be here with Luke in his seat of Solomon and Rapid Creek at the home of Lorenzo to talk about the Albanese Labor Government’s work to advance the uptake of renewable energy and storage in Australia, particularly through the Cheaper Home Batteries Program. It’s made a difference to Lorenzo. It’s making a difference to thousands of Australian households, bringing prices down, bringing the impact of energy costs down, while making a contribution to our energy system as a whole, making our energy system more stable, making it cheaper for all Australians, and, of course, reducing emissions as we track towards net zero by 2050. Here in the Northern Territory, we’ve already seen 700 households take up cheaper home batteries. It’s occurring at about 20 batteries a week. That’s the fastest uptake of this technology that we’ve ever seen in the Northern Territory. Australiawide, 250,000 households, nearly six gigawatt hours of storage that’s been added into the system and the market regulator is already observing the downward impact on prices that that kind of addition of storage makes. It’s really welcome. It should be part of our future as renewable energy superpower and ultimately a clean industry powerhouse. Exactly as Luke says, Australia is blessed with the best renewable energy resources in the world. We’re an entrepreneurial culture. We’re a culture, in our communities, where people see and know about and want to benefit from new technology, and we’re seeing that now happen at rapid pace around Australia. Battery power is the fastest growing source of energy. It grew in our system as a whole by nearly 200% year on year. And in addition to putting downward pressure on prices, it’s also helping bring emissions down. In the last reporting period, we saw the greatest fall in emissions in Australia’s history outside of the COVID period. That’s exactly the change that the Australian community wants to see. Good for household budgets, good for our energy system as a whole. Good in time to come for industry as they take on the benefits of cheap power and the competitive advantages of moving towards that kind of clean industry style of operation, and, of course, reducing emissions, and making a contribution to a cleaner atmosphere and a safer climate, something that I think we all welcome. I’m happy to take some questions about the project.
REPORTER: 700 is not a massive update. You’ve talked about a rapid pace, that wouldn’t be called 700 a rapid pace. What’s holding people back from taking up this offer?
WILSON: Well, it at 20 a week. You know, that’s faster than we’ve ever seen in terms of the deployment of batteries. It’s obviously only been going for seven months. But when you think about nationwide, 250,000 households, that is a remarkable shift.
REPORTER: But is it cost effective? It still costs money.
WILSON: Well, it’s a 30% discount, essentially, on batteries. And because of the surge in scale, the price of the technology is coming down, separate to that. So, in some ways it’s similar to what we saw with solar. Australia is the leading rooftop solar jurisdiction in the world. That was kicked off by the former Federal Labor Government. We went from having one in 1,000 households prior to 2007 having solar to the circumstances now where it’s one in three. But we need storage to catch up. We need storage to be part of supporting the further deployment of renewables and making the difference that can make to household bills. I mean, if you’ve gone from a house that has neither solar or battery, and you add both, it’s $2,000 off your annual bills. If you’ve already got solar at a battery, that’s probably a further $1,000 on average in additional cost reductions. That makes a big difference.
REPORTER: Just in relation to the grants and how much do people get? What are the actual grants you’re allocating?
WILSON: The cheaper home battery program works in a way that essentially provides a 30% discount off the cost of the battery. And that’s not something that the householder has to organise, that will occur through the through the installer. And obviously that is a significant difference. Various states and territories, in some cases, have a separate rebate program on top of that, but that will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
REPORTER: Do you know roughly how much it is in the Territory?
WILSON: I don’t believe that the Territory has a specific rebate program. So here it’s the 30% discount that comes from the Albanese Government. But clearly that does make the kind of capital cost much more affordable. And when you think that by putting in a battery, you’re going to decrease your annual bill by an additional $1,000 if you’re adding it to solar, that makes it a pretty attractive proposition.
REPORTER: You spoke of the deflationary effects of the batteries and the solar panelling, but there’s the inflationary effects, of course, of the grants that you’re handing out, they probably neutralize each other. Have you done any calculations around where, how that all finishes up in terms of its inflationary impact?
WILSON: There’s no inflationary impact when you make things cheaper, it’s like what we’ve done before, on prices [interrupted]
REPORTER: The inflationary effect comes when you’re into pumping money into the system.
WILSON: We’re not pumping money into the system, we’re making batteries cheaper, like we’ve previously made electricity cheaper with targeted rebates. You know, that takes some heat out of that part of the cost environment and we’ve seen from the market regulator that the deployment of that distributed battery energy, six gigawatt hours already in barely seven months of the program, is helping both system stability and system costs. And we’ve seen the wholesale price of energy fall, and we expect that, you know that will help keep downward pressure on energy prices.
REPORTER: But you’ve seen inflation go up, there’s the yin and the yang, if you will. You mightn’t be having an effect on household inflation, but this spending is having an inflationary effect on the economy overall.
WILSON: I don’t think that you would say that through this program, which is reducing the costs to households. We recognise that inflationary pressures are serious. We took that on wholeheartedly the moment we were elected to government. When we were elected, inflation had a six in front of it and was going through the roof. Inflation now has a three in front of it and we will continue to focus on how the government contribute to keeping downward pressure on inflation, while we keep the Australian economy very, very strong. I mean, the remarkable thing about what Australia has managed together over the last couple of years is we’ve seen a dramatic reduction in inflation from having a six in front of it to having a three in front of it without the broader consequences that other countries have experienced when they’ve sought to make that change. We have kept employment very strong in this country, and in fact, unemployment through the four years of this government, on average, has been the lowest that has been achieved by any government over the past 50 years. Almost every other country that needed to tackle the inflation crisis was only able to do that by really whacking their economy and seeing thousands of people put out of work. I think it’s hugely concerning that the new Shadow Treasurer, in the first few days of his job, proposed that the Reserve Bank of Australia change its approach and pay no regard to employment and in effect, be prepared to sacrifice the wellbeing and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Australians by seeing their jobs go on the block in order to deal with this problem. We will never take that approach. We haven’t. We’ve kept employment really strong, unemployment really low, wages rising, while inflation has come down from having a six in front of it to having a three in front of it. That’s what the Australian community expects from us.
REPORTER: You say that about 20 people are up taking this battery scheme a week here in the Territory, and that’s clearly not enough, because we’ve made this massive trip up here to incentivize it. What would you like to get to?
WILSON: I’d just like to see as many Territorians take on a battery and or solar panels as possible. We’ve seen that momentum building. All the evidence is that it continues to grow for all of the obvious reasons, like the logic economically in terms of cost reduction, is enormously strong. We know that the Australian community is also motivated by working towards a cleaner climate, and it’s like almost everything in life. You know, word spreads. When Lorenzo’s friends speak with him about his circumstances, and he says, ‘I’m essentially now in credit. I don’t get power bills anymore,’ there will be people that he meets and knows and hopefully who are watching this on the news, who think ‘I’m going to have a look at that.’ And so they should, because if it’s something that a household can undertake, or a small and medium enterprise, I mean, it has an immediate effect the moment you put the panels on and you install the battery, your energy bill at the very next time of arrival will be significantly lower, and we think that that will continue to motivate significant change. That’s why we’ve put more funding into the program.
REPORTER: As Assistant Climate Minister, do you have a view on the Lee Point development? There was a meeting at City of Darwin last night as a protest movement wants to stop this Defence housing residential development on cultural and environmental grounds. Are you across that? DHA did say last night that work would resume again this year. Does that project does have federal government support unequivocally. Does it?
WILSON: As a non-Territorian, I’m not hugely familiar with that project. If there was a Defence housing project, then it would sit with the Minister for Defence or one of his assistants. Obviously, all of these things should only proceed through a proper process with proper regard to environmental matters and other things, but it doesn’t sit in the climate and energy portfolio.
REPORTER: Plibersek actually stopped the project three years ago because of issues around the Gouldian Finch. So your agency there has had some involvement in it. Can you commit that the federal government is will stick with the Lee Point development as planned?
WILSON: If it’s been considered by the department of environment and the minister previously, in the form of Minister Plibersek, it’s now Minister Watt. You know that it doesn’t matter what the project is, whether it’s a resources project or a housing project, our commitment is always that these things need to go through a proper process and only proceed in accordance with the framework. So, if it’s been considered by the by the minister and the department previously, then that’s obviously a matter for them, and now it’s a matter for Minister Watt.
REPORTER: Just on the administrator [inaudible]
GOSLING: The administrator has been a captain’s pick of the chief minister of the Northern Territory, so it’s a matter for her. The Governor General, I understand, is going to come up in the next couple of days and hold that inauguration ceremony, and that is a decision that’s been made by the Chief Minister. So, there’s no precedent for the federal government to overturn that decision. It’s not a good decision by the Chief Minister. It’s an unethical decision by the Chief Minister, but it is her decision to make.
REPORTER: Will you shake David Connolly’s hand at functions?
GOSLING: It’s only right and proper that you extend the normal pleasantries. I’ve had some good, robust discussions over policy with David Connelly in the past. When he was appointed, when that announcement was made, I rang him to congratulate him on becoming the administrator. However, no one who is a serious leader would see offensive social media comments like that, and we all know that the Chief Minister had a very clear idea what she was doing when she made that appointment, but to then double down and continue on with that appointment when there was clearly a much better candidate available is really unfortunate, but it is the chief minister’s decision to make, and she’ll have to live with that,
REPORTER: [inaudible] for the Prime Minister to not be stepping in?
GOSLING: This is a matter for the Chief Minister. She’s made that decision. The Governor General has a responsibility here, and she is going to come up and do her job as is required of her by law. And the Prime Minister has been clear that it is the Chief Minister’s decision and hers to explain to the people of the Territory why she decided to choose someone who was so exclusionary and not someone who was more inclusionary and had a lot more runs on the board, and that was supported by members of her own cabinet, as I understand it.
REPORTER: The previous chief minister condoned Brett Potter’s reasonably vile social media posts, I guess, if you’re looking for descriptors around Nazis. Why did he keep his job and why should the Administrator be forced to go under a different Chief Minister?
GOSLING: Precisely what I’m saying, Camden, is that it is a question for the Chief Minister as Brent Potter’s situation was an issue for the Chief Minister of the day.
ENDS
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