E&OE
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC ILLAWARRA – BREAKFAST WITH MELINDA JAMES
FRIDAY 13 MARCH 2026
SUBJECTS: Fuel supply, Electrify 2515 expansion
MELINDA JAMES (HOST): Well, are you part of Electrify 2515, do you live somewhere else? And you were thinking, Gee, I wouldn’t mind if that started in my community. Well, there is an announcement being made today about Electrify 2515, of course, the 2515 referring to the postcode being expanded. Josh Wilson is the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and joins me now. Josh Wilson, good morning.
JOSH WILSON: Good morning. Melinda, good to be with you.
JAMES: Yeah. Very nice to have your company this morning. I’d love to just quickly start off by asking you, we’ve been talking about the announcement made by your minister, Chris Bowen, yesterday in the Parliament about temporarily reducing the quality of fuel, the quality of our fuel here in this country, a higher sulphur content. A lot of people were very alarmed. Hopefully we’ve alleviated some of the alarm there. But just tell us, from the government’s perspective, what do you think this will do to fuel supply?
WILSON: Well, it will increase fuel supply and also our ability to direct that to areas of need. You know, we’re mindful that there are parts of the country, particularly rural areas that are dealing with harvest challenges. And we just want to make sure that there’s that extra reassurance and that ability to respond flexibly, noting that, as Minister Bowen and the PM have made really clear, our stock holding position is good, our fuel supplies are coming in well, we’re in a much, much better position than we were in previous years in making sure that we have a strong stock holding reserve and that it is all based here in Australia. But the decision that Minister Bowen has made just gives us that little bit of extra flexibility, and as I gather you explained earlier to the listeners that the change that was made very recently dramatically improved the cleanliness in taking the sulphur content down from 150 parts per million to 10, so from 150 to 10, and it’s just being temporarily relaxed back to 50, still significantly less sulphur in the fuel than was the case for most of recent years, but just gives us that little bit of extra supply, 100 million litres a month, that can also be directed to areas of need. And that’s a sensible and responsible thing to do.
JAMES: Now, we’ve also been talking a fair bit on this program. Just before we get on to Electrify 2515, we’ve been talking a fair bit about the impact on more regional areas. The fact that, you know, for example, there’s no fuel in Batlow today, none. And we know big apple producing area, big fruit producing area. And we’re hearing that city metropolitan petrol stations are gobbling up all the fuel due to panic buying. Country centres are missing out. A lot of fuel suppliers aren’t wanting to make that extra trip, that further mile to deliver fuel to more remote places. I did hear the minister make some reference to regional areas being prioritised. What’s that about?
WILSON: Well, it goes to exactly what you’ve described. You know, when we respond to these issues, and this is a very unusual circumstance, I think everyone in Australia would appreciate that, we do it together. You know that we should think about our needs as a nation and work our way through this difficult time – that’s in our nature. That’s what the Australian community as a whole has done so well in the past, and we need to do it again now. We need to recognise that there are places in rural areas because of their particular needs and the time of year and supply needs to flow there. And it would be helpful, of course, if the rest of us recognised that there is adequate supply, and if we continue to use fuel in the way that we’ve done previously, rather than taking the view as happened during COVID, that you’re passing through the supermarket and you might ordinarily buy one jar of pasta sauce, but this time, why not take all 20 jars that are there?
That kind of response, which is, it’s understandable when there are difficult circumstances, but it doesn’t help the overall task that we’ve got. So, the message is, is really clear that we’ve got adequate stock holdings and supply. There’s no need for people, particularly in metro areas, to behave in a way that is different from the way they have a few weeks ago or a few months ago. And then, of course, as a nation, we will concentrate on ensuring that there’s adequate supply to those areas where demand is under pressure and supply is under pressure, particularly in rural parts of Australia.
JAMES: And if you’ll just forgive me, one final question on fuel, just quickly, because a lot of people are talking about excise as well, whether fuel excise relief is a possibility. There’s even talk at the moment about, I know that the Daily Telegraph is saying that the government’s take of GST is going up because we’re all paying more at the bowser etcetera, whether there’s some relief that could come to drivers through so. Some reduction in federal taxes on fuel, is that a discussion that the government’s having?
WILSON: That’s not under consideration. I mean, the Treasurer has made it clear that we certainly want to look very closely at pricing behaviour, and we’ve given more resources to the regulatory bodies to make sure that prices don’t jump in ways that are unreasonable and unrealistic and that that have a similar quality to that sort of panic buying, where, in some cases, people might be under the under the guise of a difficult set of circumstances, allowing prices to go or pushing prices higher than they otherwise need to be. We’re keeping a very close watch and adding more resources to that particular task, but we are focusing on making sure that the supply is there which is presently the case. And of course, we hope that the present circumstances will lessen and we’ll return to more normal circumstances as soon as possible.
JAMES: Okay, you will be in the postcode of 2515, a little bit later on this afternoon to make a particular announcement. Can you tell us what you will be announcing in relation to this? This project, of course, the aim being to electrify hundreds of houses within one suburb to test whether the network the grid, can cope and how it would work. What are you announcing today?
WILSON: Yeah, I’m really pleased today to say that what has already been a dead set winner, this Electrify 2515 project is going to get bigger and better. It’s a project that looks at how households, when they switch to electric appliances, and efficient electric appliances in particular, can save money. And we know that from the trial to date, looking at a range of different households, that if people shift from gas for cooking and gas for hot water and gas for heating and instead have efficient electric appliances, that they can save up to $900 a year just by making that switch. And if you add solar power generation at home to the mix, the savings go north of $2,000 a year, close to $3,000 a year in some cases. We’ve had some participants in the trial see their energy bills come down by $250 a month. So, it’s a really worthy trial to see how that process of switching to efficient electric appliances can make a difference, and when you do it on a suburb-wide or postcode-wide basis, you can also see how those systemic effects play through, because all of these households are connected to a particular substation. Now, the success of it has caused us to want it to expand, and the Cheaper Home Batteries program, which has been such an amazing success around the country, has also given us the ability to do that, because it is subsidising batteries directly. So now the program will go from around 100 household participants to close to 500 and it will include Bulli which I understand…
JAMES: 2516. I don’t know what they’re going to change their name to…
WILSON: 2515.5 – I’m not sure, but yeah, look, it has shown fantastic community leadership in that part of New South Wales. It’s proving that the shift makes a big difference for household costs and that it works well systemically, and we’re really encouraged by it. We’re grateful for the people who are participating in it, because in this in a sense, they’re pioneering a change that is underway across Australia, and that is delivering significant cost reduction benefits when we know that there have been cost pressures that have affected Australian households and small businesses, in particular.
JAMES: Now, as you said, they are pioneering this. I know there are lots of communities around the country who are aiming to do something similar, and I’m wondering how, you said that it’s been successful. What is that measure of success? Is it the people, the number of people who are signing up? Is it the number of people who are saving money, or is it some of the technical kind of experimentation they’ve been doing in relation to the systemic impact? I mean, where, what’s the measure of success here for you?
WILSON: You’ve summarised it beautifully. It’s all of those things. I mean, fundamentally, it’s about showing the immediate gains that come when a household shifts across to efficient electric appliances. It will straight away bring their costs down, as well as making that contribution to system costs and, of course, reducing emissions as we tackle dangerous climate change. And we know that it’s not for every household to make that switch from one day to the next. There will be some households that do it because a particular appliance comes to end of life, or they might be undertaking a small renovation or something. What we hope trials like this do is it shows the way for people to make those kinds of informed choices. We operate the energy rating system that helps people look at the relative energy intensity of lots of appliances that they purchase. We also obviously are supporting solar and batteries in a significant way to bring down those costs. But what this does is it gives people information and confidence as they consider their own energy circumstances, and as hundreds of thousands of Australian households and businesses are doing, choose to be the masters of their own energy destiny, but particularly their own energy costs.
JAMES: It will be extended into households within Bulli, there are probably people listening who are thinking, Yeah, so what do I get? What is available to people if they do sign up?
WILSON: Well, they should Google, Electrify 2515, and then they will be able to put their hand up if they want to be considered as part of the project, and they should do that relatively soon like there’s lots and lots of interest. There’s still space, but there is lots of interest. Households that participate get support in the form of subsidies to enable them to switch from gas hot water, gas cooking and gas heating to the efficient electric equivalents. And then they participate in the trial and obviously some of the information about their energy use and energy costs goes into the research picture that we’re building as part of that project.
JAMES: And just finally, it is something that comes up every time we talk about this. 2515, the postcode relatively and of course, not everyone living in this postcode is in this situation, but relatively speaking, on average, socio economically doing okay. And I think many people would argue that large swathes of Bulli are in the same situation. And a lot of people saying, wouldn’t government money be better spent subsidising lower income families to electrify their appliances or give them solar panels or give them batteries? What’s your response to that?
WILSON: Well, we recognize that. We know that the clean energy transition is enormously valuable for the nation as a whole, but it’s also an opportunity for us to make sure that there’s fair participation in the benefits that come with that. The Australian government has put $800 million into the Social Housing Energy Performance Initiative, just as one example, and we’re upgrading 100,000 social housing dwellings around the nation because we recognise that people on low and fixed incomes need that kind of cost relief more than anyone. We also have programs like community batteries that in many cases, are being deployed and dedicated for social housing around the country. South Australia is doing that in a dedicated way for the benefit of social housing South Australia tenants, and I really welcome that. So we absolutely recognise that in some cases, the technology like solar and batteries is more accessible for certain kinds of households and more accessible perhaps for those in better socio economic parts of the country, but we have dedicated programs that are tilting the balance towards parts of the community that need support in order to share those benefits, recognising that in every instance that we get more renewables into the system and more storage into the system, whether that’s on a large scale or at a household scale, it does bring down system costs and therefore benefits everybody. And that’s something that we feel positive about, recognising that there is a fair way to go.
JAMES: I really appreciate you talking to us this morning. Thanks so much for your time.
WILSON: No worries. Thanks for having me.
END
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