Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

Parliamentary Secretary, I identified in my speech in the second reading debate some of the reasons why businesses do not take up what they would ‘be crazy not to implement’—your words. There is quite a long list. I did not make it up. They were developed by the Ministerial Council on Energy and the National Framework on Energy Efficiency. They documented the known barriers. Relevant information is not always available at the right time to the right people to enable informed energy efficiency choices to be made. Policies and programs that only provide information do not address or overcome behavioural barriers and inertia. As energy is a small proportion of the total expenditure for many consumers, the potential savings are not perceived as justifying the necessary investment in time and effort to consider and implement energy efficiency improvements. Many organisations do not have easy internal or external access to the necessary expertise or tools to identify or take advantage of the available energy efficiency opportunities. And there are others. This is not just me making something up.

The history of energy efficiency, not just here but in other countries, is that it is not enough to require companies to do audits. We need to push them to that next step. We have put the bar fairly low. We have said in our amendments that if it can be demonstrated that there is a payback period of up to three years then they should go ahead. Three years is nothing. If we were talking about 15 or 20 years payback, then you would say that that is the sort of investment you would think twice about, but three years is a very short time frame. It is our advice that the vast majority of what will be identified in these audits will be in that category.

There are 250 corporations required under the act to do the audits. You have given us the examples of Xstrata and Orica, which identify a huge number of projects that could deliver on savings, but how many of those 250 firms are you aware have commenced putting in place the investment needed for these energy savings? Out of those 250 companies, what is going to be delivered at the end of the day? That is what we want to know. If you cannot demonstrate to the parliament that this act is working, delivering energy efficiency, then it is a pointless exercise. We are trying to shore up the legislation, to make it happen—something that your government does not seem interested in doing.

So is this just a face-saving, make it look like we are doing something exercise? Is this a red tape exercise in making these companies do their audits, but you are not prepared to follow through? We need to know how effective you think this act is going to be and, if it is not going to be effective, if you cannot demonstrate that it is already delivering, then we need these amendments to make sure that happens.