Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Chifley interjects. In the state that I the member for Chifley come from people will be paying $4 billion in additional electricity costs. In Queensland it is an extra $2 billion in extra electricity costs. These are the costs estimated to come through in the next couple of months.

Mr Taylor interjecting—

The member for Hume asks why this is happening. Well, I will tell him. It is because of the renewable energy target. It increases costs in three ways. I will go through the three ways in which it increase costs. Firstly, there are the direct subsidies. The direct subsidies under the renewable energy target are $3 billion a year. And what about the subsidies to solar? The Grattan Institute report from May 2015 says:

… lavish government subsidies plus the structure of electricity network tariffs means that the cost of solar PV take-up has outweighed the benefits by almost $10 billion.

Not $10 million but $10 billion. It continues:

… purchasing, installing and maintaining the solar PV systems—

most of which are imported from China—

until 2030 will cost $18.7 billion, outweighing the benefits by more than double.

The subsidies are particularly unfair when many renters, apartment dwellers and low-income households are unable to gain the benefits of solar PV. That is the cost. This has to be paid.

We have this fantasy belief that anything seen as renewable energy is somehow wonderful. We have this renewable energy target, but what we really need is an affordable energy target. We in this nation need to say what is an affordable price for Australian consumers to pay for their electricity. That should be the thing we look at first and foremost before we build another wind turbine—which often are completely and utterly useless.

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