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

I rise today to welcome the changes that are coming before the Senate to address the problems with the renewable energy target. I remind the Senate and Senator Boswell, who has just resumed his seat, that when I spoke on this legislation, the Renewable Energy (Electricity) (Charge) Amendment Bill 2010 and related bills, last year I pointed out this problem would occur. I cited evidence from Dr Mark Diesendorf, at the ANU, pointing out that if solar hot water systems and heat pumps were left in the program we would see a flooding of the market, a collapse in the price and that it would be a disaster for large-scale renewables. The then minister for Climate Change and Water at the time said to me that that was not correct. In fact, she quoted from her department—and of course it is the minister’s responsibility to take note of the modelling—to the effect that the MMA modelling:

… indicates that less than five per cent of the renewable energy target would be taken up by solar hot water and by heat pumps.

The government department got it incredibly wrong and did not listen to the industry at the time and, as a result, we have had a stalling of investment in large-scale renewables that was foreseen and that should have been dealt with. At that time I moved an amendment and, sadly, I did not get the support of anyone in the Senate—even Senator Boswell and The Nationals did not support it, even though now they recognise that that was the situation. The really wonderful thing is that this is a chance to participate in the energy revolution. This is a revolution every bit as big as the telecommunications revolution that is going on around the planet. The wonderful thing is that we are seeing an explosion in new forms of energy that are taking over from past forms. I think it is shocking that there are people in the Senate who want to stop the revolution—they want to stop this massive change that is taking place around the world.

When this legislation came in—and this is part of what we are now trying to fix—the government proposed a regime whereby you had 1.5 kilowatt system with a five multiplier. In less than 12 months solar panels came down in price by 40 per cent—and that is an extraordinary figure. That is how fast this revolution is progressing around the world. Because of the critical mass volume that is occurring around the world, systems are getting cheaper and so they are more within the reach of ordinary people. But the point I made last year was that we should go for a much greater ambition than 20 per cent renewable energy by 2020.