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

I am really concerned about the principle here of intervening in this way on the deeming period, for one sort of technology, without really understanding what it is going to do to the mix in that sector. I understand Senator Xenophon believes that this will actually drive solar, but it will not; it will drive gas in this particular sector. That is not the outcome that we want to achieve here. I totally agree that we are in a conundrum, because we do not know what the hot water sector is going to look like post 2012. It is very hard to make judgments about that right now. I really do not think it is a good principle to intervene in this way without a sense of exactly what we are likely to be driving or otherwise. My sense of it is that it should be in an energy efficiency scheme. But it is not; it is in this scheme. If you take away that support for heat pumps, then you drive gas. What that does to solar is hard to say, but it is not going to drive solar; it will drive gas.