Energy Bill Relief

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (15:06): My question is to the Treasurer. When will embedded network small businesses be able to access energy bill relief that was announced nearly one year ago?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries) (15:06): I thank the shadow treasurer for his question. It's an important one because as a result of the lobbying by then Business SA, now the South Australian Business Chamber, about making sure that energy bill recipients who are in embedded networks—i.e., don't necessarily have a direct individual relationship with an energy retailer—the energy bill relief may not have flowed to them. Very quickly, I made a commitment to this house that we would authorise the retailers to enter into arrangements with the—it's probably not the best word—operators of the embedded networks to make sure that they can be paid.

My understanding is, I guess, similar to what has informed the member for Colton's question, and that is that, while some progress has been made in getting the energy bill relief to people who are on embedded networks, mostly predominantly businesses in embedded networks, that has not been successfully completely rolled out. If I can provide any assurance to the house and to the member, the value of the benefit and the availability of the benefit will be preserved for those members of embedded networks to make sure that they can get benefit from it.

I am happy to take away the question from the member for Colton as to the timing of when people should expect to get it if they haven't been getting it already but, I think, also for the benefit of the house maybe some particulars about what the barriers have been to successfully rolling that out. The member for Colton is right: the commitment was made some time ago now. We authorised the energy retailers at that time to get cracking, making those arrangements with those—again, not the right word—operators of embedded networks to make sure that the benefit was going out to the members of the embedded networks. The extent to which that has not happened means that there are those people not getting the benefit of cost-of-living support, and that's something that we could seek to rectify as quickly as possible.