Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to comment on the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill 2009 and the Renewable Energy (Electricity) (Charge) Amendment Bill 2009. I am pleased that the government has finally brought these bills to the Senate for consideration. The primary bill aims to set in place a renewable energy target of 20 per cent by 2020. It will also enable the government to introduce a new solar rebate scheme based on renewable energy certificates that come with small energy units such as solar PV systems. The legislation progressively increases the 9,500 gigawatt hour annual mandatory renewable energy target to a 45,000 gigawatt hour mandatory renewable energy target, to be reached by the year 2020. The coalition parties support this objective, but I emphasise to the government as we enter this debate that this is not a blank cheque. We come to this debate with conditions and with the hope to be able to negotiate a satisfactory outcome to ensure and guarantee the passage of these bills.

The bills also replace the solar rebate of $8,000, which the coalition introduced in government, with the solar credit scheme. It will issue RETs to installers of PV systems of 1½ kilowatts or less and will ensure a trading scheme that provides some form of rebate—though not as generous as the previous scheme, I note—for solar panel installations. Under the bills, wholesale purchasers of electricity or liable parties are required to meet a share of the renewable energy target in proportion to their share of the national wholesale electricity market. Those who do not meet the target will face financial penalties.

As I said, the coalition welcomes the opportunity to debate these bills and hopes—with the government’s cooperation—to see their smooth passage through the Senate. We do so because our vision from this side of the chamber is for a clean energy economy. We believe that Australia has great capacity to transform its energy base and in doing so to provide for a clean energy future for all Australians, by using the great mix of technologies that are available to Australia and that are continually being advanced and developed.

In my own state—and, indeed, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi, in your own state too—of South Australia there remains great potential for the growth of clean energy, great potential in geothermal, great potential in solar, great potential that is already being recognised in wind, great potential around all parts of Australia for wave and tidal energy and great potential for the development of clean coal opportunities and carbon sequestration opportunities—not just through carbon capture and storage but through new developments in fields like algae, like the opportunity to capture carbon and to store and use it not just in a carbon capture manner but for agricultural benefit in the long term as well. We recognise all of these opportunities, but in particular we wish to see the step towards a clean energy economy taken but taken in a manner that actually preserves Australia’s interests—that is, Australia’s economic interests and the interests of Australian industry, households, farmers and the entire Australian community.

It was the coalition which first introduced Australia’s mandatory renewable energy target. It was one of the pioneering steps that the Howard government took in relation to climate change policy that, thanks to the politics pursued by those on the other side of the chamber, have been largely ignored or rewritten in history. Nonetheless, at the time the Howard government brought in the 9,500 gigawatt hour target which, taking account of already existing renewable energies in Australia, provided for an almost 10 per cent renewable energy target. We moved in the last phase of our government to support a 15 per cent clean energy target. As was the case during the last campaign, when Mr Rudd—as he did on the ETS, by trying in a failed gesture to bring its commencement date forward—sought to make a gesture of one-upmanship, as he liked to do time and again, and raise it to a 20 per cent target we indicated support for the principle of that 20 per cent target. Having done that at the last election, we are frankly gobsmacked that it took the government so long to get its house in order and to bring this legislation to the parliament and that it decided to scramble it up with its far more controversial ETS package and, along the way, stuffed around the renewable energy sector so comprehensively.

I have spoken many times in this place about the damage that is being done to the solar industry thanks to the approach of the Rudd government. We saw last year on budget night the solar industry surprised with a means testing on the $8,000 solar rebate. There was no consultation. There was no consideration by the government of the impact of this rebate on the solar industry, particularly of the impact it would have on the effectiveness of the rebate to achieve the maximum possible generation of electricity.

By excluding households with a gross income above $100,000, the government ensured that only small solar systems were installed. We were told—it was witnessed and evidenced—through the various inquiries undertaken in the Senate about numerous instances of this and we saw the long-term average size of solar systems shrinking because of the government’s means testing. Not only did they persevere with their ridiculous means testing; but on 9 June this year they scrapped the solar panel rebate prematurely. Having given countless assurances to the industry that there would be a smooth transition from the rebate to their solar credits arrangement, they then up and scrapped the rebate without having introduced into this parliament the legislation for this renewable energy target and for the solar credits arrangement at all. They left the solar industry hanging out there on a limb with one program abolished and the other without even the legislation in this place. One wonders what the government were thinking when they decided to both drag their heels in regard to this legislation and scrap the previous legislation in the manner in which they did.

Then, just a few days later, on 22 June at 8.30 am, the government, again without any warning to industry, scrapped a second renewable energy incentive scheme. This time, it was the Renewable Remote Power Generation program. This was a program that helped families, businesses and not-for- profit organisations who were not connected to the power grid to install solar, wind or other renewable energy units. This was a clever program because the only alternative that those people in remote and rural settings had was to use diesel power generation.

So the government had a longstanding, well-supported and well-taken-up program which the Howard government had put in place. Through it, people who did not have access to the power grid, instead of installing diesel units, installed solar units or other clean energy units with a subsidy from the government and support from the government. But no, again, this was scrapped pre-emptively on 22 June and, as a consequence, we see the solar industry sitting in limbo without a rebate for those off-grid systems, without a rebate for those on-grid systems and with nothing coming out of the solar credit system yet because the government has dragged its heels.

We do welcome very warmly the decision of the government to bring this forward, and not just to bring it forward but also to decouple it from the ETS. Not only did the Rudd government delay the introduction of their renewable energy target, which they knew from day one in government was their policy and their plan, but they also tied the legislation, this renewable energy target, to their emissions trading scheme for political motives. In a sense, they took their own legislation hostage. They said, ‘You can’t have this without that; you cannot have the RET without the ETS.’ It was a maddening decision by the government, and you have to wonder why on earth they decided to inflict such pain on the renewable energy sector—such uncertainty on the many businesses operating in that sector and such uncertainty on the many households that have tried to achieve and to take up renewable energy options. The linking of these schemes was unnecessary; nobody supported it, and you have to question why they did it. Indeed, the Clean Energy Council, at the height of the scrapping of the rebate programs by the government back on 16 June, said:

Any political tricky manoeuvre to hold the legislation up now will simply end up being a remarkable own goal.

Well, an own goal it has been proven to be, of course. With the defeat last week of the ETS legislation, the government has agreed, at long last, to decouple these bills—