Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I refer to comments from the opposition’s environment spokesman, Mr Hunt, on ABC radio this morning when he said the program was designed to be demand driven and not capped. That is the essential point here. The government has provided caps of some 6,000 rebates for Australians who are in a position, to who ought to be able to and who want to put solar panels on their roofs. Under the policies of the former government, the rebate that was available without any means testing would have used up the allocation of funding for that program within a remarkably short period of time. To explain even further, our expectation is that Australians who earn below $100,000 will seek to take advantage of the means test and take the rebate. We will monitor the demand for this program closely. We also anticipate that Australians will seek to take advantage of the other programs that the government has and as well show their enthusiasm for solar energy and seek to have solar panels on their roofs.

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