Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Once again it is one of those moments in the House when members opposite have just spent a considerable amount of time criticising their own policy. In fact, we heard from the shadow minister recently that he plans to expand this program extensively—using just this program, using the same system—to deliver one million solar panels for hot water systems onto Australian roofs by 2020. Again we have the negativity of this opposition laid bare. This was John Howard's program—the renewable energy target. It was John Howard that set up the link between the eligibility of certificates and the accreditation. That was actually put in by John Howard, and they thought it was good. Even the member for Flinders thought it was good. Just recently, back in March, he said:

… I even negotiated … the 20 per cent renewable energy target. There are those who are critical of it—

and we have heard some; I presume they will go and try to convince the leader to change his policy—

I am guilty as sin of supporting it. But it was not about finding the highest cost for renewable energy; it was about finding the lowest cost for renewable energy. If we are moving into that space, we need to do it on the lowest cost basis.

And John Howard set the target, he set up the scheme, he set up the system and it was good.

We came along. There were some problems with it—exactly the problems that you are describing. So we strengthened the assessment process. Anybody who has followed this knows that it is actually the state and territory governments that have the responsibility for regulating workplace health and electrical safety standards—the states have that responsibility. I am sure you are going to get up and bag them tomorrow in parliament. I am sure you are going to get up and bag all those Liberal state governments that have not dealt with this. But the federal government moved to set up our own assessment process where, when we find installations that do not demonstrate competence, we inform the state governments of those problems so that the state governments can take the actions needed to get them fixed. By the way, at the moment the inspections show that four per cent of the systems are considered unsafe. You are quite right: it is too high. You should get onto your state government colleagues and make sure that they improve their systems, because they are responsible for safety and workplace standards in relation to this.

Let's move on to the Leader the Opposition and his promise that one million homes will have solar by 2020. I point out that the figures do not add up. This is what you would expect, actually. I am surprised that no-one has noticed that, at 100,000 rebates a year, to get to one million by 2020 you would have to have started in 2010. I think maybe someone on the other side should work out that it would actually cost $166,666,000 every year between the next possible opposition budget, if they actually win—heaven forbid, with these sorts of figures—and 2020. It would be $166,666,000, not $100 million. So the direct action plan is profoundly flawed. You cannot reach one million homes by 2020 capping it at 100,000 a year. We do not have that many years left between now and then. So let us not take this plan particularly seriously.

Let us look at what Mr Abbott had to say on the need to encourage more solar initiatives on top of current programs:

Well, we think it can and what we're proposing to do is to add $1,000 to whatever other assistance measures there are for solar roofs. Now, we think it's important that we encourage the use of renewable energy. We think that moving from electric to solar hot water is a very practical and constructive way for Australian households to reduce their emissions.

Later, he said:

Well, again, it will operate in the same way that government programmes operate.

Until you guys get to your caucus meeting tomorrow. I am sure you will convince Mr Abbott that this is not a wise thing to do. Mr Abbott said:

This is $1,000 on top of existing incentive payments. So the existing incentive payments will continue and there will be $1,000 on top of that.

He said further:

Well, as I said, it will be run as an addition to existing programmes, so it would use existing programmes. The sort of safeguards that are built into existing programmes would simply carry over to our additional $1,000 incentive.

This is your policy. You have just spent the last half an hour or 40 minutes criticising your own policy. When it is John Howard's program it is good; when it is ours it is bad. Then it will be yours again and it will be good. This is negativity gone mad. You do it and it is good, we do it and it is bad and then you do it again and it is good, only you do it on a larger scale—except your figures do not add up. You cannot deliver what you are promising to deliver on the money you have put on the table.

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