Page 1925 - Week 05 - Thursday, 6 May 2010
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for the next four years, which I must acknowledge, in a year when the public service has been asked to find an efficiency dividend, is some acknowledgement of the work that needs to be done by the department.
Let us look at what is on the agenda. Firstly, the government is yet to deliver its final energy policy for the ACT. We waited quite some time for the draft policy, which was released just before Christmas last year, so we hope that the final version is progressing well and we look forward to its release. There will be the development of the greenhouse gas targets legislation, and the minister has also mooted that he will be tabling legislation to establish a white certificate trading system for electricity retailers to systematically implement energy efficiency measures right across the Canberra community—at least, that is what I hope it achieves. Then there is the extension to the feed-in tariff that will see the scheme enable medium to large-scale installations and, hopefully, open up the scheme to new investors, in both the commercial and the community sector. On top of that we must see action plan 2 of weathering the change, which will put the concrete actions on the table. There is no doubt that there will be initiatives in this plan which will inevitably require substantial government funding in next year’s budget.
It is clear that, with the work that DECCEW has on its plate, $2.6 million over four years is not a large amount of money. When you add to that the government’s ambition to undertake audits for all government departments and the intention to facilitate the introduction of electric cars into the ACT, it starts to look like a shrinking pot of money. I will be keen to find out during the estimates process how that money will be spread around, because $650,000 a year is not much to do all of that work.
Obviously, DECCEW has some staff already working on the development of the energy policy and the feed-in tariff, but the budget papers reveal that the department has struggled to meet its anticipated outcomes this year. Progress on the energy policy has been slow and the department’s policy branch failed to deliver 50 per cent of its strategic objectives in the 2009-10 financial year—including not completing the energy policy, not reviewing the Nature Conservation Act and not completing the “Think water, act water” review. But let us face it: no matter how hard people are working, fewer departmental resources mean less progress. So this extra funding is certainly a step in the right direction.
The Greens were pleased to see the increase in the energy concession rebate in the budget, though once again it was not as much as was hoped for—only $20 a year for households, when prices rose by $30 in the last year for the average household energy bill, and nothing to make up for years gone by. Still, it is a step in the right direction. But it would be encouraging if the government, firstly, acknowledged that the rate was still lower as a proportion of the average electricity bill than what it was five years ago and, secondly, made a firm commitment to put low income families and others at risk of energy poverty at the core of their programs for energy efficiency. So far, we have not seen many encouraging signs, and the current programs do not specifically target those groups. Aside from the successful but small WEST program, there is little on offer for this group. As the Greens outlined in the chamber when we debated our motion on this last month, we must not leave behind those most vulnerable.
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