Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

No handover at all for him. Four months to handover to a bloke who had worked for her before—that is extraordinarily incompetent.

I want to ask a question about solar panels and this building. I note that $187,870 is to be paid to Silex Solar Pty Ltd for solar panels for a rooftop trial for work between April and June. Solar panels will be installed on the roof of the Senate wing and the gardeners' compound. Was a thorough cost-benefit analysis done on the project to install these solar panels? On average, how much electricity will they generate? Will the electricity generated be fed back into the grid or will it be solely used for Parliament House? Will an outrageous payment be made for it if it is fed into the grid? If this trial proves unviable and there are negligible savings or no savings in electricity costs, will there be a further installation of solar panels at Parliament House—in other words, will the plan be abandoned? In the meantime, I note that the electricity costs for this building have gone up from $290,000 a month in September last year to $320,000 a month. Have any low-carbon solutions been put in place in the interim that may have caused this increase or is there some other reason?

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