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

As I was saying, the Solar Credits regime, which is the Commonwealth means for providing assistance to all Australians who are seeking it for solar panels, is not income for the purposes of social security and does not have to be reported to Centrelink. It may be the case with some state regimes where, for example, power is sold back into the grid, that in some circumstances income generated through that would be classed as income.

I want to make it very clear just how much a pensioner would need to receive, under current arrangements, before their pension would be affected. For example, a single pensioner would have to receive $142 a fortnight before it would affect their pension. That would be a very unusual situation, Senator, given that in New South Wales, for example, the gross feed-in tariff amounts to about $60 a fortnight. However, the government are aware of this issue, it has been raised with us, and we are looking to see if there is any finetuning required. (Time expired)