E&OE

ANGUS TAYLOR: It's great to be here with Luke Howarth, who's the extremely hardworking Member for Petrie, and I know - I've spent time up here before - he is out working for his community every day of the week. Can I acknowledge David Wrench, really wonderful to have you here too - the Chief Executive of Hivve.

We are, as a Government, absolutely committed to reliable, affordable power for all Australians, and an energy system that continues to drive down emissions at an extraordinary rate, which is happening right now - 250 per cent increase in solar and wind in our system in the next three years. This is creating great challenges, but projects like these are all about delivering those outcomes of affordable power, reliable power, while we meet our emissions targets.

What you see in this project sitting right behind us is a fantastic example of Government working with a great entrepreneurial business to deliver an outcome, which reduces costs and at the same time delivers a great outcome for the customers, who are the kids. Let's face it - kids having a good classroom, with great light, which has got air conditioning and exactly the conditions you need to be able to get your work done each day, not fall asleep in class as I used to do from time to time. It is just absolutely brilliant to see this outcome here being delivered by a combination of Government through ARENA - $350,000 from ARENA - alongside the private sector.

One of the interesting parts of this is the application here applies to classrooms and education, but it also can apply in many other areas, and as someone who lives in rural Australia, the cost of connecting rural areas, rural households, rural businesses has constantly gone up because of the cost of building the poles and wires out to remote areas. These off grid applications, like the one we see behind us, are really good examples of how we can get that cost down, energy cost down for Australians living in the most remote communities.

Congratulations to Hivve. Well done. We want to see more of this. This is the third of the applications that ARENA has supported - two others in Holsworthy and in Dapto, south of Sydney. We want to see more of these because they are delivering a fantastic outcome.

Well done and thank you very much to Principal Roger for the work you've done - it is outstanding.