Page 859 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 27 February 2013
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on with what we had started we might be in a far more advantageous position than we are now. We might be able to stand here and say, “We can have some confidence because you’ve actually achieved something.” But the reality is that is not true.
Let us look at the feed-in tariff. This initiative will cost Canberra households an extra $225 every year in their power bills. It has been so badly managed. The small and medium elements of this scheme were cancelled not once but twice in the dead of night by Mr Corbell. That is how successful they have been, Ms Berry. There we go: we will just shut it off tonight; nobody will notice.
Legislation for the large-scale feed-in tariff did not even require the solar facilities to be located in the ACT. When we asked earlier in the week how many direct jobs this initiative would create for Canberrans, the Treasurer did not know or would not answer the question. We still wait for the answer. How many jobs are we getting from all of this money that we are paying? When asked how much this will cost Canberrans, he said $13 a year, decreasing to $9 a year, which is approximately $1.8 million and then $1.3 million, but that is for households only.
There is the government’s support of the carbon tax. There you go: “No government I lead will ever introduce a carbon tax.” $189 a year slugged on Canberrans. This is accounting for 78 per cent of electricity price increases for Canberra families from 1 July 2012. There is no concern whatsoever for the cost of living. We have seen it go up. Rates have gone up, water has gone up, electricity has gone up; the cost of living across the board goes up. It was only the initiative of the Canberra Liberals that got the cost of living statement, Ms Berry, in this year’s budget where it shows what it went up. In this year’s budget it went up $600. It will be interesting to see, when we get more accurate reporting in the coming year’s budget, how much it goes up. That is how much worse off they are under the initiatives of your colleagues that you laud today. You really need to dig a bit deeper and not just read the speech provided.
We know that three in five Canberra families will be worse off paying a portion of this $189 tax. A family of five can expect to see their electricity bills increase by $478 from 1 July, of which $370 is attributed to the carbon tax. A family of four can expect to see their electricity bills increase by $333 from 1 July, of which $258 is attributed to the carbon tax. A family of three can expect to see their electricity bills increase by $297 from 1 July, of which $230 is attributed to the carbon tax. It will add at least $73 million to the cost of running the ACT government over the next four years which will be passed on to taxpayers, because it is taxpayers’ money in the end. This is between $110 and $140 per household each year just to cover the government’s existing activities. We know that it is so easy when you are only spending taxpayers’ dollars. How do we know this? Because we are going to build a light rail no matter what the cost. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. There is Treasurer Barr on the bow wave of the light rail just crashing through because there is no number which is too large to stop the light rail.
That is not responsible budgeting and that is not responsible government. Do the work, make the documents public, show us the return on the investment and then make a judgement. Do not just say, “We think it’s a good policy because it’s progressive and therefore it doesn’t matter what it costs.” I can assure you that the people of Lanyon,
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