Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

We can, and I think this does need to be explored because, whilst we have been the beneficiaries of fossil fuel, whilst we have been the beneficiaries of lifting our standards of living out of fossil fuel, the great challenge for Africa is how they lift their standard of living in a continent where they have large amounts of fossil fuel. If we had used part of our renewable energy target to develop cleaner coal, we would have a technology that could be replicated in a part of the world that is going to have to focus on fossil fuels for many years to come if they are going to lift their standard of living. It is disingenuous for us, as a rich country, to tell a poor country what they can and cannot do on their emissions.

But, be that as it may, reducing power has come at a cost, and yet we have also seen that the price of power has not diminished as much, because of the investment in the distribution networks right across Australia—the poles and wires. Some of this is an outworking of the royal commission after the Black Saturday fires, certainly in Victoria. My concern with the renewable energy target is: are we favouring one part of our economy over another? I have this double edged sword within my electorate where I have a lot of dairy farmers, a lot of irrigators and a lot of horticultural producers who are using electricity driven pumps.

A renewable energy target is, in fact, in a small way, driving up the price of their business, driving up their costs of doing business, and so, in some regards, we are working against those particular parts of our economy. If you are a dairy farmer in Victoria, most of your milk is usually exported as dehydrated milk. They are an energy intensive and somewhat trade exposed industry, but they are not currently exempt from the impacts of the renewable energy target. My argument is that we should be excluding our food producers and our food processors in the export industry from the impacts of a renewable energy target.

Finding the balanced solution is also an issue when it comes to the communities that I represent. I think, overwhelmingly, they do favour solar. They do like solar, and my fear is that this bill still leans towards wind generation. Wind generation has had a pretty fair run, in my opinion. But solar probably has not, and what has happened is that the price of solar panels has got cheaper. The ability of a community to work together so that they can collectively have a solar farm needs to be enhanced in legislation. It is currently not there.

The other thing that is a conflict in my area is the impact both on health and on aspect—of looking at wind turbines. I know that, when I talk to people in the southern parts of my electorate, they are very concerned about the new changes in planning from the Victorian state government which limit their opportunity to have a say when a wind farm is going to be put in their area. The flip side, of course, in all of these conflicting areas, is that our local councils, who obviously do not have large amounts of rate bases, are attracted to the earning capacity of wind farms. So we have an interesting paradox where some parts of my electorate are very much the recipients of a renewable energy target, some parts of my electorate are very much the losers of a renewable energy target and some parts of my electorate are exposed to the risks of power prices increasing.

I think we do need to review, with a balanced solution—and this is what this attempts to do. I think we also need to understand, and we need to move towards some renewal. I think it is just not fair if those who have an objection to a wind farm do not have an opportunity to have their objection heard. It is not fair if those who are impacted in their daily lives and in their activities are not able to be heard as to how we move forward.

My great dream is around solar, and I will share where I want to go with this. Currently, a person can put solar panels on their roofs and they will pay $8,000. If you have a look at solar panels on roofs, whilst they are reasonably effective at reducing the power for the person who has them on their roof, they are very hard to manage into a grid. If you were to get around 100 people who also wanted to commit $8,000 and wanted to collectively put together a bid to build an $800,000 solar farm on the outskirts of some of my regional towns, which are very sunny, I think that is something we should be more open to when thinking through this legislation.

Currently, the renewable energy target system favours solar panels on roofs but does not favour the same solar panels on a paddock right next door to a town. Something about my community that I have been very proud of is that people do have a sense of working together. We do have land that is reasonably cheap. If you look at any studies about how to manage a grid and how to maintain a mix of solar panels, it is much easier to do it from a maintenance perspective when they are on a paddock because you do not have to climb on the roof. But also you have a bulk of power that can be managed into the whole grid. Ultimately, that needs to be looked at when we talk about renewable energy.

It really should come down to practicality, not ideology. This legislation is trying to recognise that we ran the risk in the current legislation, as it stood, of putting prices up through the roof by hitting penalty rates. There were time frame restraints on how to build the amount of renewable energy at a time when behaviour has changed. One thing that we must do is to commend the Australian people for changing their behaviour. They have learnt to use less electricity. They have learnt to insulate their houses better and to turn lights off. But it is also important that we work with industry so that we do not put ourselves at a significant disadvantage when it comes to producing the goods that we produce and to grasping our competitive advantage—that being cheap electricity—as we move towards being good global citizens.

The contrast in my electorate, as I say, is a discussion between the wind farm generators and the irrigators and the dairy farmers who also have their milk processed. It is a discussion around those who have to live with a view to wind farms and the concerns they might have around their health, and it is a discussion around how we can look at solar panels collectively, as communities, rather than just have them on our roofs. The legislation does not embrace everything I would like, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. The challenge for us is how we, as a country, continue to grow the standard of living we want and ensure that the environment is also looked after. The other thing we must also think of is how we develop technology that can be taken up in developing countries so that they can also lift their standard of living without having adverse effects on the planet.

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