Page 3100 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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the first indication of the breakdown of the program. My main concerns with this program are twofold. Firstly, the government are spreading the funding for this program too thinly. They are trying to do too much, and with not enough money. Secondly, the government are wildly under-resourcing these programs.
On energy efficiency, we see that the government are foreshadowing a number of rebates. There will be 750 rebates on energy efficiency appliances. There will be 400 rebates on domestic insulation and there will be 250 rebates on solar hot water. The total expenditure for these is estimated at $1.24 million.
Then there is another program that will target low income households and renters. There are 800 rebates for additions to homes to save energy and 650 rebates for renters of consumer goods, with a total expenditure for this program of around $465,000. All up, that is around $1.7 million for domestic energy efficiency rebates and incentives, which it is worth noting is less than half the climate spending at the arboretum in the next financial year. It is also less than the $19 million to help householders reduce their emissions footprint, as the minister said on radio this morning.
I think it is also worth noting that, whilst these are good initiatives and good starting points, when you put those numbers up against the number of households in Canberra, it underlines the scale of things we have got to do. It is certainly not going to be enough to get the wholesale switch towards home efficiency that Canberra needs and that we know will deliver the best and cheapest form of greenhouse abatement over the next five to 10 years. I want to make this point quite strongly: these are not the kinds of amounts of money that indicate that we are really taking this problem seriously.
Putting energy efficiency measures into people’s homes is infrastructure. It improves their quality of life, it reduces energy bills, it improves our energy security in the longer term and, of course, it cuts our greenhouse emissions. It might seem small and unimportant because it occurs on such a micro scale, but we need to start approaching this problem with the macro thinking that we apply to large infrastructure and we need to start allocating budgets to match. I note that, for example, next year we are going to be spending $147 million on roads in the ACT.
One of the issues that the Greens will be raising with the government is whether or not the department is indeed the best body to implement the programs that have been funded and whether or not the funds allocated could be better spent leveraging funding from the federal government or delivering incentives to consortia and small businesses to implement the efficiency measures for households. It may well be that the provision of rebates will indeed inspire small businesses to get established and take advantage of the rebates on offer from the ACT and federal governments, but it would be useful, I think, for the department to think outside the square about how to leverage the best bang for buck on this program. A bit of innovation may see some really dramatic improvements.
I would like to comment, though, that the Greens were pleased to see the consideration of low income households and renters in the switch your thinking program. There is no doubt that more money could be spent on this as well.
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