E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC STATEWIDE DRIVE WITH PRUE BENTLEY
WEDNESDAY, 20 MAY 2026
Subjects: Social Housing Energy Performance Initiative, Cheaper Home Batteries program, gas taxation
PRUE BENTLEY (HOST): 3,500 social and community houses in Victoria have recently been upgraded with things like solar panels, fans, energy efficient heating and cooling, and electric cook tops. And according to the government, there is more to come. Josh Wilson is the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Josh Wilson, good afternoon.
JOSH WILSON: Hi, Prue. How are you going?
BENTLEY: I’m pretty well. There’s more than 85,000 social and community homes in Victoria. 3,500 have just been done. Is this just a drop in the ocean? Will it make a difference?
WILSON: Well, it makes a difference to every single one of those 3,500 and we’re on track to deliver nearly 20,000. We don’t say that that’s the end of the process. We do say that social and affordable and community housing should have the benefits of these kinds of energy upgrades, and we’re very conscious at the Albanese Government, working with the Allan Government, that the energy transition needs to be available to everyone, and we actually think it should, should have a focus on people facing disadvantage who are affected by, in some cases, quite old housing that isn’t particularly energy efficient, and also by the costs that come with rising energy prices, and they affect people on low and fixed incomes more than other Australians. So we’re really glad that we partnered with the Victorian Government in the first round of this program, with shared funding to the tune of $143 million, where they’re coming along with the second stage, which is $120 million from the Commonwealth, and we will move towards that 19,000 home upgrades with all the benefits that that brings.
BENTLEY: And how long will that take to do the whole lot?
WILSON: It’ll unfold over the next few years in a staged way. We’re glad to see the pace at which Minister D’Ambrosio and the Victorian team, through the Energy Efficiency and Social Housing Program, which is the name that it has in Victoria. The way that they’ve progressed with those 3,500 homes, and every single one of those homes, as a result, will be cooler in hot weather and more particularly warmer in cold weather, but they will have seen dramatic reductions in their energy costs, probably in the vicinity of a couple of $1,000 a year, and relief from that anxiety that Australians facing disadvantage shouldn’t have in relation to seeking to warm their homes or keep them cooler when we get extremes of weather.
BENTLEY: How many of these homes are actually in regional Victoria? What’s the split metro regional?
WILSON: I don’t know that precisely, but that we welcome the fact that the Victorian Government is actually putting an emphasis on regional and rural housing, and that does make sense, because when you think about this housing stock, it does tend to be older housing and does tend to compare poorly in terms of its existing energy efficiency, and that is exaggerated in rural and regional areas, and so making an emphasis on that, which the Victorian Government is doing, and I’m glad to say that the Western Australian government in my home state is also doing, we think is really appropriate.
BENTLEY: So, I mean, you mentioned that we’re talking a couple of $1,000 a year less to run, that’s a huge difference.
WILSON: It is, yeah, and that’s what we can achieve if we make our homes more energy efficient, and if we add the benefits of distributed renewable energy, you know, solar power. So, if you have a household that is made more efficient, switches from gas to efficient electric appliances, and then also in some cases add solar, adds insulation, does something to help prevent drafts that might be part of that housing construction, the reduction in overall energy costs can be in that $2,000 even up to $3,000 a year mark, which we know makes a difference, and it makes a massive difference, particularly to people on low and fixed incomes.
BENTLEY: So, as you say, these are homes, existing social and community homes that have been there for a long time that were not built to the standards that we expect today. The social housing that is going up right now, is that more fit for purpose, I guess, when it comes to energy efficiency?
WILSON: It is. I mean, we’ve made improvements over time, as you would expect, and now new housing in Australia is built to the 7-star energy rating. A lot of existing homes, probably 70% of the housing stock that was constructed before that energy rating system came in, probably averages around the 2 to 3 star mark, which is, which is really quite a bit lower, and we know that if you can take a dwelling from the 3 to 3 star mark up to say the 5 star mark, you reduce energy demand in the house by 40% so that’s, you know, a 40% cost reduction just there, but the benefit is wider than that, because those changes actually, as I suggested earlier, make the household naturally warmer in cold weather and cooler in hot weather, when you have insulation and proper sealing of windows and doors and those things. So it can mean that when you’re not in the midst of summer and you’re not in the depths of winter, that you don’t need cooling or heating, because your house is naturally more comfortable, and we think that that should be available to all Australians, and we’re working with the states and territories to make that kind of progress.
BENTLEY: Josh Wilson’s with you, he’s the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy with the Albanese Government. Now your government has reduced the rebates for home batteries recently, because the demand was pretty overwhelming. It’s fair to say that you underestimated the demand for home batteries here in Australia, and at the same time there are these calls to tax gas companies for exports of our precious resources. Why won’t your government consider taxing gas exports? I mean, you could potentially do all of the social housing, you could, you could do almost everybody else’s home in this way. You could hand out batteries if you did that. Why not?
WILSON: Well, just to come back to the sort of premise of the question, we’re really pleased with the progress of the Cheaper Home Batteries program. It’s getting close to 400,000 households inside the first year, and it’s added probably 12 gigawatt hours of storage, which is not just an immediate benefit to the houses that put the batteries in, it’s actually making a system-wide benefit, and battery power is the fastest growing contributor to our energy system, and it’s a really key part of supporting the further penetration of renewables. So we’ve been pleasantly surprised, but we haven’t reduced that effort at all. In fact, we put more money into the budget to reflect the strength. The change that you referred to is just to make sure that the subsidy applies evenly and doesn’t end up being weighted towards the large battery end, it’ll in fact mean that more people have the opportunity to access that that subsidised distributed energy resource. But on the gas tax question, I mean, we, we recognise that the tax system needs to be made fairer. We recognise that in relation to Australian resources like gas, that’s precisely why we reformed the PRRT, that is delivering more revenue to Australians. It’s precisely why we’re now looking at a gas reservation scheme for the first time on the East Coast, I should say, because we’ve had one in place here in the West because of the foresight and the sensible policy of a State Labor Government at the turn of the century, but we’re making that change to deliver cheaper gas to Australian households and Australian businesses.
BENTLEY: Can I ask, sorry to interrupt, Assistant Minister, but with the changes to the PRRT, how much more will the government be able to feasibly collect with those changes?
WILSON: Well, it’s certainly a few more billion dollars a year, and that’s not a small contribution to our capacity to deal with those other things that you’ve mentioned…
[INTERUPTED]
BENTLEY: Is that just a result of the fact that we’re seeing energy prices spike right now, and if they go down in the future, will that also go down?
WILSON: All taxation, whether you’re talking about an individual worker or a company, the amount of tax that they pay will be in some ways dependent on the amount of income that they generate, but the reform to the PRRT is an enduring reform. It covers more entities and it delivers more revenue, just as that gas reservation scheme, which will be the first time that’s been applied in Australia. A really big reform to ensure that proportion of the gas that’s developed in Australia has to be made available to the East Coast market with lower prices as a result for households, energy generation, and businesses. That’s been the experience here in Western Australia over the last two decades. People will have seen in the budget, the changes that we are making so that the tax system is fairer in relation to houses. I mean, the Treasurer was right to say that our approach is resilience on the one hand, but also reform, reform that makes a difference right now to our budgetary position, to the well-being of our communities, but also, of course, sets Australia up for a stronger and fairer and more sustainable future. We see that as our obligation, and we’re glad to work with a community that is calling for more of that, and that’s what we want to do more of.
BENTLEY: But you won’t be taxing for the resource anytime soon?
[INTERUPTED]
WILSON: People will have proposals about things that government might consider, and that’s the picture of a healthy democracy. The Treasurer has handed down the budget with all of the measures that we’re presently taking, but we have continued to say, we see it as our obligation to be a steady, focused reformist government that puts Australia in a stronger and fairer position going forward. We have done that quite consistently over four years. I’ve mentioned some of the changes that we’ve made in relation to gas, we’ve made relation changes in relation to superannuation, so that it’s fairer, so that people with very, very high-value balances don’t receive a kind of concessional treatment that is exaggerated in order to allow us to support people with very low balances. We think that that’s entirely in keeping with Australia’s values as an egalitarian place, as a place that says there should be a fair go. We’ve delivered five sets of tax measure for workers, because we recognise that the system had got out of whack with the taxation that fell on companies and corporate entities on the one hand and workers on the other. We’ve delivered those changes so that workers, particularly at the low and middle part of the spectrum, get further relief. We think those things meet the expectation of the Australian public, that we’re prepared to look at our system and make beneficial changes that carry us in those directions along those vectors – more fairness, more resilience, more sustainability.
BENTLEY: Josh Wilson. Thank you very much for your time.
WILSON: Thanks, Prue.
ENDS
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