Page 782 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 27 February 2013
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I refer to the feed-in tariff. Under the Greens and Labor government we have seen the pursuit of small, medium and large-scale feed-in tariffs which are expected to increase household bills by $225. Low income earners in the suburbs are subsidising better-off residents to have solar panels on their roof. The ACT had the most generous scheme in the country for small-scale feed-in tariffs, as Mr Gentleman will certainly recall, with a premium of 45.7c per kilowatt hour. Simon Corbell dismissed calls by the ICRC to reduce that premium.
Despite having the most generous scheme in the country, in the 12 months leading up to June 2012, the 7,169 small and medium solar sites in the ACT produced a measly 0.28 per cent of the ACT’s electricity requirement whilst adding approximately $1 million to the cost of electricity in the ACT. That is passed on to low income families across the ACT.
On top of this, the entire small and medium-scale feed-in programs were completely bungled, resulting in Minister Corbell axing the program twice in the dead of night, as we will recall. To this day, it is not exactly known how much government overcommitted in its caps, but we know that it was a massive impact on small solar businesses.
Yet the government believe that they can run a large-scale feed-in tariff seven times larger than the one they have already bungled. Let me quote from the Australian about the feed-in tariff:
The real tragedy is that these arrangements cost about $450 per tonne of greenhouse gas saved, an extraordinary amount with vastly cheaper alternatives available. The community is paying far more than it should to reduce emissions.
We have things like the plastic bag ban. That was a real feel-good policy that is yet to deliver any definitive environmental benefit, and it adds cost to the consumer of around 5c in the dollar for every bag purchased in the supermarket. That adds up. When asked whether shopping bags were an environmental issue, our own environmental protection agency responded that they “cannot say it has been one of any significance”. So why are we doing it? The Productivity Commission found:
Based on the evidence available to the Commission, it appears that the Australian State and Territory Governments do not have a sound case for proceeding with their proposed phase out of plastic … bags.
Britain’s Environmental Protection Agency found that shoppers would have to use the same cotton bag every working day for a year to have a lesser impact than lightweight plastic bags. We know that does not happen and we now know that there are actually health aspects, health implications of doing so. Shane Rattenbury has now called on the legislation to be improved to ensure that fully compostable bags are the only kind allowed in the ACT.
We talked about parking yesterday. ACT Labor and the Greens are clearly anti parking. We heard that yesterday. Parking fees have doubled since Labor was elected in 2001. The 2012 increases for city parking were $1.50 a day, far more than the CPI.
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