Page 3001 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order! I cannot hear the minister.
MR CORBELL: It announced a subsequent and additional wind-back of the renewable energy certificates scheme, which reduced the multiplier quite considerably. For that reason, what we saw was, instead of a take-up of one megawatt every quarter, which was what we had seen for the duration of the scheme until the last month or so of the scheme’s operation, one megawatt a week—a week—being signed up to the scheme. This was entirely unprecedented. It was a circumstance that was beyond the ACT government’s control and, as a result, it saw the scheme subscribed in six weeks when it would have otherwise taken close to two years to occur. So that is what occurred, and that is why we had to see the sudden closure of the scheme.
Of course, now we see the Liberals and the Greens proposing to reopen the scheme and we are going to see another rush. I have received advice today from the Australian Solar Energy Society that would suggest that they expect that rush to see the scheme subscribed again, fully subscribed again, within six to seven weeks. So that is the sort of reckless law making that we are going to see this afternoon. We are going to see another rush and another sudden closure of the scheme, because the Liberals and the Greens are going to vote to reopen the scheme.
What we are also going to see is the complete closing out of medium-scale generation activities, because the reopening of the micro scheme and making the micro scheme eligible to the medium generator category will mean micro will be installed more quickly, because it is quicker to install than medium, and it will suck up the remainder of the allocation made available to the medium generator category. So we have got the Greens proposing a measure which is going to close out larger scale renewable energy generation and we have got the Liberal Party proposing to support such a measure; when they are on the record as consistently opposing the feed-in tariff scheme, they are reopening it. They are going to vote to reopen part of the scheme that they have consistently opposed for the last two years.
The government’s policy has been clear. There are caps on each of the categories, and we do not want a situation where larger scale renewable energy generation is compromised. Mr Seselja knows, the Greens know, that there is already about six megawatts in the medium generator category that will have to be reallocated to the micro scheme to honour the existing contracts that have been entered into. That leaves eight or nine megawatts left in the medium generator category, and those opposite and those on the crossbench are going to vote for a measure that will give the rest of that back to micro, will compromise medium-scale generation, will compromise larger scale renewable energy generation in this city, and that is a tragedy. (Time expired.)
MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, a supplementary?
MRS DUNNE: Minister, why was business given no notice of this closure, and why was there no consultation with business as to the options for a more structured phase-out of the scheme?
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