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

I am of the belief that every member of parliament here, including the crossbenchers, has a real concern about the increasing cost of electricity and the effect that that is having across our communities. Last financial year we had over 100,000 homes in this nation that couldn't afford to pay their electricity bills and were so far behind they had their electricity cut off. A hundred thousand homes in the nation had their electricity cut off. And one issue where I think we can help relieve electricity bills is the cost of the subsidies.

This year the direct cost of the subsidies paid to renewable energy providers will be $3.6 billion. That is the equivalent of $150 for every man, woman and child in the country or $600 for the average family of four. It is direct cost bang on top of their cost of living. Some of those subsidies, which I recently discovered, were actually extended as a gift by the former Prime Minister Mr Rudd. The previous Liberal government had set up a renewable energy scheme that went from about the year 2001 to the year 2010 and where the renewable energy target was set to escalate up to 9,500 gigawatt-hours. What happened? That scheme was meant to carry on where those people who made that investment were able to get the renewable energy certificates and sell them on the market as was required up to the year 2020. That is how those people made that investment. But with a stroke of a pen, with one addition in the bill introduced by the former Labor government, they extended those subsidies to roll out for another decade. It is in fact handing billions of dollars away freely to people that have made these investments over and above the generous subsidies they have received. This year those companies that made that investment prior to 2010 will receive $800 million, close to $1 billion, extra over what they are getting for the electricity, which is already at record level prices.

It is unconscionable to continue that scheme on for the next decade and to expect consumers to pay those people additional subsidies over and above what was contemplated at the time they made that investment. That would reduce electricity bills for consumers in this nation by close to $800 million to $1 billion from the year 2020 if we went back to the original intent. It is unfair that consumers should pay this extra cost, and I call on members of the opposition to sit down so we can try to this in a bipartisan manner.