Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

On Tuesday I was speaking on the report of the Standing Committee on the Environment, Communications and the Arts on the Save Our Solar (Solar Rebate Protection) Bill 2008 [No. 2] when time elapsed, and I want to continue to my remarks. I was saying at the time how grateful I was for a quote from Mr Dean Mighell, state secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who said:

The Rudd Government does not appear to be serious about tackling global warming. Rudd’s claim that ‘climate change is the great moral challenge of our age’ has clearly been forgotten or blatantly disregarded.

That was a very perceptive comment by a very well known trade unionist, Mr Dean Mighell, a very well known player in Labor Party circles. He, like the rest of us these days, clearly understands that Mr Rudd’s words are never followed with action.

Nothing could be clearer in relation to the way the Rudd government has handled the means test on the solar panels rebate. Nothing was said prior to the election to indicate that this was going to be part of the Labor government’s first budget. In fact, all disinterested observers had the other impression. I think the committee’s report records that before the election Mr Rudd attended at the venue of a business that supplied and installed solar panels. Mr Rudd clearly gave the indication to the Australian voting public that he not only would be supporting the solar panels industry but would be actually trying to enhance it.

When my time to speak ran out on Tuesday I was talking about two businesses in the Townsville area, where I come from, who were in great distress because they had been building up their panels installation businesses over a period of two or three years. They both said to me that they had not made a lot of money to date but that they had everything in place for their businesses. Then suddenly, without warning, on budget night their businesses were just ripped from beneath them. They were very distressed, and I was saying that one of the business owners confessed to me that for the first time ever he had voted Labor because he had been impressed by Mr Rudd’s concern for the environment, particularly the indications of his very strong support for the solar panels industry. This person was dismayed and betrayed by the approach of the Labor government on budget night.

Throughout the day of the committee hearings that I attended, which was on the day in Melbourne, we had witness after witness come in and indicate how wrong this was, how their businesses had been shattered and how orders had been cancelled. Many of them gave the figures of the orders that were on their books that were cancelled on the day after budget night. The submissions that were made repeated that story. Again, the people calling my office in Townsville gave indications of the contracts that had been cancelled overnight. Yet I see from the report that in the following days of hearings, which unfortunately I was unable to attend, the department gave some quite startling evidence. They indicated that the number of applications for the solar rebate had increased since the budget announcement. I do not for a moment suggest that the departmental officials were not telling the truth, but it seems so at odds with the evidence given to the committee on the day I was there and in the submissions about the numbers of contracts that had been cancelled, how people were being put off and how businesses were in danger of folding because of this budget announcement.

One of the witnesses to the hearings did say that they believed that if the department’s figures were correct then one of the reasons would have been—and these reasons are quoted at length in the coalition’s report on this particular inquiry—that many people believed that the means test started in the new financial year, not the day after the budget, and so would have been trying to get their applications in before 1 July came around. That was given as one of the reasons for any possible increase. Another reason was that some families’ household incomes may have been below the new $100,000 threshold during the 2007-08 financial year yet they may have been expecting a higher than $100,000 payment in the 2008-09 year. They may have been expecting an increase in the following year so they were rushing in before the end of the year so that they did not go over the $100,000 mark and therefore become ineligible. There was also a suggestion that the outrage in the media, in letters to the editor and on talkback shows from the general public at this mean-spirited action by the Rudd government on budget night had publicised this to an extent that it possibly had not been before. I understand from evidence that the money that the Rudd government has made available in the budget, even though it reduced the means test to $100,000, is likely to run out in about November or December this year, which means that if you do not get your application in quickly it does not matter what your income is, you will not get the subsidies for the solar panels.

This whole disgraceful episode of the Rudd government on budget night is indicative of the vandalising approach that this government has taken to the environment. Here was a program that was encouraging people to use solar energy so as to save on carbon energy and lessen greenhouse gas emissions. We have had a lot of talk from the government about the emissions trading scheme to reduce emissions. Here was a way that this was going to happen through ordinary people who wanted to do their bit, yet the Rudd government just shattered this good way of allowing people to contribute. It is similar to the Rudd government’s approach to the environment generally. In the razor gang cuts at the beginning of the year most of the programs that were severely impacted upon were environmental programs. The natural resource management—the NHT and NAP—programs of the previous government were slashed. Less money was made available to those community groups who were doing good on-the-ground work. Their incomes were slashed by something like 40 per cent. That meant that, in many regional communities in my state where these organisations are based, many of the jobs that had been created around caring for the environment were lost overnight.