Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Under you—I will talk more about this later, Senator Birmingham—under the Howard government, what we know is investment in renewables, the deployment of renewables, went backwards as a total percentage of our energy profile. Those on that side presided over a reduction in the investment in the utilisation of renewable energy. The fact is this is a government which has gone well beyond its election commitment for solar rebates. The original commitment was for $150 million for up to 15,000 solar rebates over five years. This government will fund around 80,000 solar panel installations. What Senator Birmingham might like to know is how that compares with what the previous government did, because he comes in here saying, ‘Oh, you should do more.’ Under your government, there were 10½ thousand rebates. We are going to fund about 80,000 installations; they on that side funded about 10½ thousand rebates when in government.

The fact is we have been making clear for some time that we would transition out of this rebate program to the Solar Credits scheme under the renewable energy target. It is the case that demand in this program was very high, very substantial. As I said, we went well beyond our pre-election commitment of $150 million. We have previously announced that we would transition to Solar Credits from July 2009. (Time expired)