Page 1124 - Week 03 - Thursday, 26 February 2009
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Like Mr Rattenbury, I am prepared to give the minister the benefit of the doubt that he will work to get this done. If there is an undue delay, it is within our capacity—and we would be open to it—to bring something back to the chamber to force some action. But at this stage, I would say to the minister, “We will give you the benefit of the doubt.” In particular, I would say that I do not want to see an artificial deadline which would see us rush through a scheme which may not be right for the territory.
There are some important balancing decisions to be made here by the government, and by this Assembly eventually. We need to balance the desire and the importance of establishing the solar industry in the territory and the potential economic and environmental benefits of that, which I believe is a goal we all share. At the same time, we do not want to see a situation where particularly low and middle-income households in Canberra are forced to pay far too much for their energy, potentially to subsidise solar energy and other renewables. That is the balancing act that we now face.
This next phase is an important decision. We will give the minister and the government some latitude to get that right. If we feel that they are dragging the chain, we will prosecute the case here in the Assembly and we reserve the right to bring something back. But we do want to give the minister enough latitude to get it right and not to rush a decision that would lock the territory into a scheme that does not work—that does not work environmentally, does not work economically or does not work in a way that protects the economic interests of all Canberra families, which is something we are particularly concerned about.
That is why we will not support this amendment at this time, but, as I say, we reserve the right to bring something back later should the government drag the chain.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (4.39): The government will not be supporting this amendment or the next two that Mr Rattenbury has foreshadowed. I will speak to all of these issues now, because the first three amendments all deal with the same substantive issue, which is when Mr Rattenbury is proposing that the cap should be removed and take effect. Mr Rattenbury is proposing that the cap should be removed as of 1 July and that the premium rate—or 75 per cent of the premium rate or some other level of the premium rate—should be made available to all generation above 30 kilowatts from that time.
I stand by the use of the term “reckless”, because I think it is reckless to say, “Well, regardless of no work having been done on detailed assessment of impacts or measured ways to ameliorate impacts on household consumers, we believe that 0.75 of the premium rate should be available to all levels of generation above 30 kilowatts on 1 July.” That is reckless, it is ill considered and the government does not support it.
That is why we have outlined that we will do this in stages. I think we are in agreement that there is a real opportunity with this legislation. The opportunity is not just in terms of increased uptake of renewable energy and increased generation of
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