Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate those behind the Bushlight program, because it has been a great success. Now that it has gone, what are those communities who have not yet taken advantage of it going to do? They will go back to diesel. With diesel they will get the diesel fuel rebate, so they are going to be subsidised for using diesel to generate greenhouse gas emissions when they should have been given the money upfront by way of the subsidy to put the solar programs in place.

Years ago the Greens introduced a solar fund into this place to try to remove all of these diesel generators and replace them with solar systems, but it has not happened. I have had several emails about this in the last few weeks. One in particular—and I told the author I would quote the case study but not his name—said:

… our rural location means that connecting to the grid is expensive (more than $30,000), and given our limited income we were really relying on the RRPGP …

… they told me that as far as they knew the programme was going to carry on.

This was on budget night, when he rang the department.

Nothing was said to me about the limited budget or that it might end soon. So I was really shocked to hear that the programme ended …

It’s unlikely we’ll be able to afford to put in a solar system now: we need a reasonably powerful system—

and so on. So people right across the country are being denied this.

The answer to this is clear—that is, a national gross feed-in tariff. Who has resisted this to the very last? The government. Minister Wong is totally opposed to a gross feed-in tariff. How did both the coalition and the government kill off a gross feed-in tariff? By referring it to COAG, knowing that it would get the lowest common denominator. Now state after state is going to a net feed-in tariff, which is no use at all in driving the investment that is necessary to go into renewables. The more successful a subsidy is, the more likely that it is going to be axed, changed, limited or destroyed because it is a cost to the government. The more successful a feed-in tariff is, the better it is all round. It encourages greater investment. So you have to ask yourself: why, when Europe has benefited so amazingly from a gross feed-in tariff, when Spain’s renewable energy has expanded and when right across Europe we are seeing this work, is there such trenchant opposition to it from both the government and the coalition in Australia? The only answer is: they cannot afford to give renewable energy a go because it will leapfrog so-called clean coal. Renewables will be online, cheaper and more cost-effective, and the coal industry will be at risk. That is why we end up with this ridiculous situation of ad hoc, stop-start arrangements for renewables.

The Minister for Climate Change and Water herself says ‘industry needs certainty’. They certainly do. Can you point to any venture capitalist or any superannuation fund that would think there was any certainty at all about investment in renewables in Australia—in solar in particular—when we have witnessed this disgraceful litany of, first of all, the means test, then the abolition without consultation and then the messing about with renewable energy technologies to give certainty to the big polluters? Then we get what we have now: the abolition of our remote scheme. Of course, the answer is always, ‘But we are giving you $1.3 billion for up to four systems for solar thermal around the country.’ Yes, that is true. But where is the pathway after the four? If you had a gross feed-in tariff, there would be an investment pathway to roll out renewables on a grand scale. Talk about hypocrisy. We see it here on these red seats—oozing out from both the government and the coalition. I wish they would have the honesty to stand up here and say that they will never see the renewables get ahead of coal and that they will do everything in their power to not allow the renewables to take over. Because as long as they sit on these red seats, Australia will be a coal exporter and Australia will generate coal fired power.

In the UK they have moved to say ‘no coal fired power stations without CCS by 2020’—and it will not happen—but we do not have that here in this country. Every time a renewables proposal comes forward, they check to see what the big emitters think, and the big emitters say, ‘Just give it a photo opportunity.’ My final question to the Senate is: how many ministers have taken their photo opportunity with their leaflets on the one-off solar panel? It is a disgrace. People who see those pictures need to see that behind that smirk there is a great big coalmine and that the great big coalmine will prevent any kind of coordinated or systemic effort. If the government were serious, we would have a gross feed-in tariff. I welcome a change of heart from either the government or the coalition in supporting a strategy to give us real renewables in this country.