Page 3025 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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publishing of the data to the public) will be undertaken on a monthly or more frequent basis and will be published on the department of Environment, Climate Change, Energy and Water website.
It is worth noting that the amended Act also provides for the transfer of caps between categories, should one or the other be over or under subscribed. This flexibility, along with public tracking of uptake, will provide certainty to both industry and consumer participation and cushion the impact of the eventual winding up of the medium and micro elements of the scheme.
That is a letter from Mr Corbell dated 15 March this year. That is not what happened. There was no cushioning and there was not the flexibility that he referred to; there was just a screeching halt. That is no way to do policy. Industry, when they seek assurance from government, should be able to rely to some degree on the truth of that assurance. They make decisions on the back of that. They make decisions as to whether to take on employees on the back of that—and no doubt many did. And yet, just weeks later, we saw the scheme halted in the dead of night.
The minister anticipated 18 months, but the cap was reached in less than three months. They were caught by surprise, according to the government, due to the fast tracking, via the commonwealth, of its previously announced solar schedule to reduce its up-front solar bonus payment, and an excess of solar PV panels arising from closure of the New South Wales feed-in scheme. They just did not know how to manage this scheme.
It has been revealed by the government in a briefing that there is an excess now. We have been told different numbers, I have to say—even from what have been put on the table today. We are now told that there is an excess of approximately seven megawatts above the 15 megawatts for the microgenerator component, roughly costing the taxpayer an additional $4 million. That leaves only eight megawatts for the medium generator component. Put simply, the scheme is broken.
The ICRC recommended a reduction in the premium to 39c, but Mr Corbell decided against it. We supported that. We said at the time again that we did not agree with this scheme, but that this premium rate should be coming down. It is too high, and it was kept too high for too long by this government. That helps to create those conditions.
We have seen a most extraordinary position from the minister today. He is saying—he said it in question time and he said it in his speech—“They were going out and marketing their products aggressively.” What do you expect them to do, minister? They are businesspeople. There is a scheme in operation. They will market it to get people to buy their product. What else did you expect? It is an absurd rationalisation. The flip side is that you are saying to them, “You should not have been marketing your products. You should not have been aggressive.” That is business. There is a product to be sold; people go out there and advertise it in order to get people to buy lots of their products so that, God forbid, they can make a profit.
That is the way that this scheme has been set up. It has been set up on the basis of a large, unsustainable subsidy. That is a different matter. It has been set up on the basis of that unsustainable subsidy. But no-one should begrudge business or consumers
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