Page 1450 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
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There are none, just none. It is lovely to stand there and be sanctimonious, be pious, but you make the point yourself, Mr Corbell, that middle income earners will be affected by this, middle income families will be affected by this. The opportunity is given to you to support those middle income families, but you turn it down. You do not give a reason or excuse for it. You go to the rhetoric; you go to the attack; you go to the bull. But when you read it, it simply says:
… ensure that the financial impact of clean energy policy on low and middle income and vulnerable energy customers is minimised …
I do not see the problem with that; it is a reasonable stance to take. We should protect as many people as we can. Perhaps this goes back to the motion this afternoon on the economic situation we now find ourselves in: this government are very good at spending. They will end up being the highest taxing government this territory has. They will become even higher taxing after the budget in six or seven weeks. And the pocket they will put their hands into will, in the main, be middle income earners.
If you want to damage those who earn a middle income, go right ahead with this. There is an opportunity here to get it right. It is a shame, as always, when it comes to taxation, that the Labor Party, which are big on spending, but very poor on getting outcomes for that spending, will continue willy-nilly on their merry way, without any regard to the people and the families of Canberra.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (7.56): I am rising to speak with regard to both sets of amendments. I will start with Mr Seselja’s comments. I think it was a very interesting analysis that he provided of the cost of living pressures in Australia. I would be interested, in fact, to see the real details of his figures because he started to talk about them but did not finally conclude on how much was left over; he just said “not much”. I would be interested to see those numbers at some stage, because it sounds like it is an interesting piece of work.
But it was frustrating to hear the same old arguments about the feed-in tariff from Mr Seselja. I think he constantly comes back to this thing about it being a high-cost way to reduce emissions. I have now, on a number of occasions, spoken in this chamber about the fact that a feed-in tariff has a number of different goals. Mr Corbell has stolen my thunder on this point somewhat in articulating the economic diversification opportunities as one of the other factors that can arise out of a feed-in tariff.
I think it is also interesting that Mr Seselja has this fixation that only high income earners can get the feed-in tariff. Again, I would like to see his data and where he gets that from. I certainly am aware of at least one family that earns well under Mr Seselja’s model family of $120,000 a year and that has put solar panels on their roof and got the feed-in tariff, because they think that is an important thing to do. They are prioritising the expenditure of their money and they think that is a good contribution to make.
That is obviously not everybody’s choice but I think Mr Seselja’s fixation that only high income earners can get the feed-in tariff is simply not true. It perhaps reflects his
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