Page 5676 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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The minister replied:
We would have to provide you with some assessment of that …
This government chooses the most expensive way to reduce emissions at every turn. This is nothing more than irresponsible spending of taxpayers’ money.
So we come to the specifics of this legislation. The government wants us to agree to a large-scale scheme. Referring to the bill, we asked the government how this would minimise costs to electricity consumers, and we were told that this is a statement referring to value for money in procurements. That is the vaguest of assurances.
We were concerned about how the cap was managed. We were given assurances that the first tranche of 40 megawatts to be auctioned has to be in the ACT, but, of course, the bill does not specify that. We were previously told by this government that it had a plan for a $30 million grant, which, of course, fell over and it moved to a feed-in tariff scheme. There is nothing in this bill that ensures that even one megawatt of the 210 megawatts has to be produced in the ACT. That was confirmed yesterday in a briefing. There is nothing in this legislation that would see even one megawatt have to be produced in the ACT. This bill allows all of the electricity to be generated outside the ACT, and I think even outside what most people would see as our immediate region.
When asking about criteria for direct grant or competitive process on tariff capacity releases, we were again told that this was a value-for-money procurement consideration. The minister could grant all 210 megawatts without any competitive process. When asking how much this initiative will cost, we were told the government does not know. We were advised that the government has a cost estimate on the 40 megawatt first auction but that this is cabinet-in-confidence. We were told there is no estimate for the 210 megawatts. All we have is the $225 per year government estimate that has been put forward before.
We asked about what technology would qualify under this scheme but were not given a conclusive answer. We also asked why interstate generators were allowed to participate in this scheme, concerned about what this would mean for local business opportunities, and we were told that interstate generators would be limited to the ACT region, a region, as I understand from what we were told in the briefing, that could extend down to the Victorian border. This was not the government’s concern. Rather, its primary interest was to be able to claim generation credits through renewable energy certificates. When we asked about how tariffs for this scheme and supporting payments were to be calculated, the government’s answer left more questions to be asked.
What can be gleaned from this is that Canberrans stand to be left with supporting companies and multinational corporations that do not make a direct contribution to our local economy. They could be hundreds of kilometres away, producing renewable energy that is then fed into the grid that we pay over the odds for with no benefit to the local economy. In paying over the odds in order to achieve a 40 per cent emissions target, we will allow other states to emit more. Those are the facts.
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