Page 4405 - Week 12 - Thursday, 24 October 2019
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The bill before the Assembly is not very long. As a matter of fact, there is only one section of the act which the government seeks to amend. The government is seeking to allow the feed-in tariff capacity to be set through a disallowable instrument. This is because the maximum capacity of 650 megawatts is currently set out in the act itself. Given that we are currently at, as I understand it, 641 megawatts, if we continue to remain at 100 per cent, this maximum needs to be lifted.
In the briefing on this bill that we received last Thursday, I asked why the target of 650 megawatts was set in the act, as is currently the situation, to which I was advised that the intention was to create both certainty in the renewables market and to highlight that our collective goal was to achieve and maintain 100 per cent renewable electricity. My follow-up question was: if the intention of this bill is to increase that capacity, what is the government’s new capacity target and how did it come to that number?
The minister’s staff in the directorate were very clear that over the coming decade the anticipated demand would grow to approximately 900 megawatts and that target would be set by disallowable instrument immediately after the passage of this bill. A feature of a disallowable instrument is that the executive is able to quickly set rules and regulations in far greater detail than the legislature can accommodate and that a disallowable instrument can be enacted far faster than legislation.
Changing the feed-in tariff capacity is not complex. It is a matter of changing the digits in a single section of the act. Surely even humble parliamentarians can comprehend that. Making such a change is hardly going to take countless hours of a parliamentary draftsperson’s time. It is also important to remember that this act has already been amended four times over the course of this term alone.
In his presentation speech, the minister stated that he intends to set the feed-in tariff capacity to 900 megawatts and that this is to anticipate, and accommodate, our energy consumption over the next decade. So on the measure of complexity, drafting difficulty and the need for flexibility to change it by way of a disallowable instrument, the argument for delegation does not stack up.
I acknowledge that in some circumstances it is appropriate to allow regulation rather than legislation, but this simply is not one of them. As a matter of fact, the minister, earlier this year, stated that enshrining the commitments in primary legislation was a clear signal of the importance of renewable electricity targets and helped to provide certainty about policy direction to the renewable electric sector.
On a policy issue as important as this one, particularly one that has the support of all parties in the chamber, it is important that we continue on this path together. This means that proposals for these targets should come back to the Assembly for scrutiny, for debate and for decision. I commend my amendment to the Assembly and implore all members to support it.
The minister did me the courtesy of letting me know that the Greens or the government—either way, the result is the same—will be supporting my amendment.
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