Page 3400 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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as carbon equivalent emissions, fuel efficiency, embedded energy, trans fats, and other unhealthy food content, et cetera. There are plenty of examples out there, and their salutary effects are known. There is no excuse for this government to be so far behind the game.
Recently, the minister for the environment accused me of waiting for a Johnny-come-lately to climate action to introduce a national emissions trading scheme. It took me a while to work out who he was talking about, because I have not actually been waiting for Johnny Howard to get serious about climate change; I have been waiting for the ACT government to do so. While I am glad the appropriation bill put some flesh on the bones of its latest commitment to a greenhouse strategy, Nicholas Stern’s report makes it clear that targets as low as those embodied in the current GGAS scheme do not go far enough by a long shot if we are serious about reducing the impact of global warming.
This government should be careful of casting its stones too wildly—people know that its greenhouse record is made of glass. One test of its real commitment will be if Mr Gentleman’s solar rebate proposal gets through the bureaucracy and the cabinet processes without being undermined and rendered ineffectual. Again, I find myself waiting for another welcome but overdue climate change initiative. I have not grandstanded on this point, but a solar rebate proposal was part of my budget response speech last year. So were a range of other initiatives, and I am happy for government members to take them up. I am very glad that Mr Gentleman has taken up the solar rebate baton; I wish him every success and will support him all the way.
The utilities tax impacts adversely, however, on the cost of green power. One effect of the utilities tax is to push up the price of green power. The take-up of green power is appallingly low in the ACT, despite our high incomes which make it entirely feasible for many of us to pay the higher tariff. Surely it is not beyond the imagination and power of the government to instruct Actew to exclude the utilities tax impost from the price of green power.
Leaving aside the poor design and retrograde impact of the utilities act, I am pleased to see that the Stanhope government has joined the Australian Greens as the true economic conservatives in Australian politics. At a time when the Reserve Bank is saying that public spending and household consumption are key drivers of inflation that could lead to further interest rate hikes, we have the very depressing spectacle of both major parties falling over each other with electoral bribes which will inevitably fuel the problem.
In his initial criticism of the utilities tax act, Mr Mulcahy said:
We are staring down the barrel of an economic slowdown as high rates and charges eat up discretionary spending.
It would seem that Mr Mulcahy still holds to that opinion, given this attempt to repeal the entire act rather than to alter it to make it more socially and environmentally responsible. Squandering surpluses for short-term political gains which will, in the end, lead to higher costs, higher interest rates and higher rates of inflation is not what I would call fiscal responsibility.
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