Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What is so wrong with business and the Australian people expecting certainty? What is so wrong with expecting certainty from a government? What is so wrong about expecting certainty at the moment is that we have a Gillard Labor government—a Gillard Labor government hand in hand with the Greens which, despite their protestations, would seem to be more intent on touting its green credentials but destroying as many green jobs as they can?

What is so wrong with business expecting certainty from its government? Unfortunately, the only certainty that business and the Australian community can now expect from this Labor government is that whatever they touch in terms of programs they will stuff up. We have had botched, bungled and mismanaged program after program after program. This govern­ment can change their ministers as many times as they like but they cannot change their stuff-ups.

In terms of this stuff-up, on 28 February this year Minister Dreyfus prematurely announced—despite what members opposite try to say, there is no way around it, he prematurely announced—the cessation of the $1,000 solar hot water rebate. And he said at the time: 'It's good practice. It's good practice to close this kind of program this way.' Really? What is good practice about in February announcing the closure of a scheme which business and stakeholders rightly had expectations around—because of the govern­ment's own announcements and because of what was on government websites. Senator Milne went through some of the website details that industry are entitled to rely upon—if they actually go to the bother of looking at—which clearly showed that, until Minister Dreyfus made his announcement on 28 February, the govern­ment and the government's departments expected that this scheme would continue until the end of June. But, oh, no, Minister Dreyfus says, 'It's good practice to close this kind of program in this kind of way'—just before 5 pm; just before the solar shops close on a Tuesday night. It was deliberately announced that way to make sure that the shops were closed and could not do anything about the announcement by the time they heard about it.

This government has caused as many as 60,000 homeowners to miss out on significant savings if they install a hot water system. Senator Moore can talk about what she thinks was supposed to be the intent of a scheme such as this but, irrespective of whether it was the intent of a scheme such as this to help change community attitudes rather than rely upon, as suggested by Senator Moore, the mentality of the community that, 'I will only do this because I can get a rebate for it,' the fact remains that the community, stakeholders and business should be able to rely upon the policy underpinnings and the program predictions of this government. But they simply cannot—and there is example after example after example of those spectacular failures.

In terms of this one, again, irrespective of whether solar hot water companies, including Rheem—who has said that it has $10 million worth of stock left to move—and consumers were going to be doing this anyway, a program like this is like a beacon to which moths will gather, and the moths in terms of the stakeholders and industry probably stocked up or manufactured, as in the case of Rheem and a couple of our local manufacturers. They are the very sorts of producers and jobs that this government would have us believe that they are trying to protect. But the government are far more intent, it would appear, on corporate welfare with our car companies rather than sticking to their promises to businesses that are trying their best to hold their own and, for example, manufacture products in this country. Rheem is one of those left with some $10 million worth of stock on hand as a result of the overnight premature cessation of this program—by the stroke of a ministerial pen. Why wouldn't the industry operate on the basis that this scheme would continue until at least 30 June?