Ms Margie McCarthy:

I will answer the Senator's first question on the findings from the heat study about evolving the supports. As I said, the heat study strongly supports fabric efficiency to ensure homes are insulated in terms of health and well-being and in reducing people's energy demand to heat their homes.

One thing the study points to is the use of the word "evolution". The elimination of fossil fuels has to become very much a key feature of the upgrade conversation with homeowners. We need to look at the optimal level of upgrade to ensure that if a person gets to a stage of investment in his or her home and is debating between replacing his or her gas boiler or continuing with some of the deeper retrofit upgrades, he or she strongly considers the heat pump installation at a level that is appropriate. In other words, he or she is putting a heat pump into a home that can operate well and keep his or her energy bills low. Therefore, its upgrade has been to that level.

I mentioned earlier the heat loss indicator study we are about to launch into, which will look at the optimal level in terms of the indicators from a home to be able to manage installing a heat pump while working within cost-effective ways so that energy costs are not going up and people are still living in comfortable homes. That will play out. We are just going through the approval process at the moment. That will influence the requirements and criteria we roll out through the grants programme in terms of being able to support people on a grant to install a heat pump. That is just one example.