Page 3755 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 24 August 2010
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individuals and organisations who provided submissions to this inquiry and appeared before the committee at public hearings. I would also very much like to thank the committee secretaries who worked on the interim and the final report—that is, Hanna Jaireth and Margie Morrison.
I commend the report to the Assembly. My committee colleagues may also wish to provide some comments.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.08): I would like to make some brief points. Firstly, I would also like to thank committee members. I thank the chair, Ms Hunter, and Mr Hargreaves and Ms Porter, who was previously on the committee. There are a lot of good things in both the interim report and the final report. There are a lot of things that we agree on. There are a couple of points of difference which I would like briefly to highlight. Paragraph 1.6 states:
One member of the Committee expressed opposition to the 40 per cent target as outlined in the interim report.
That one member is me. I maintain that we do need a strong and sensible approach, that we do need to take strong action, but I am not convinced about the 40 per cent target that has been put forward in the interim report and that has effectively been adopted in the final report by omission, more than anything, I suppose. It has been effectively adopted by the committee, but, in the end, we do have a point of difference there.
The Canberra Liberals have legislation in the Assembly at the moment for a 30 per cent target. We believe that is a very challenging target. That is a tough target to meet. It is, though, a sensible and strong approach. It shows leadership, but we believe it gets the balance right in what is actually achievable and what is reasonable in the circumstances, given that we now have approximately 10 years to reach these medium targets—in fact, 9½ years or so to meet these 2020 targets.
I also want to highlight another area where there is a slight point of difference. Paragraph 2.44 states:
One member of the Committee expressed in-principle concern about an “opt out” approach to green energy.
I do remain concerned about it. The committee ended up with a recommendation that said that the government should look at this but come back to the Assembly, and I think that is sensible. But I do have a concern with the opt-out approach in that people can effectively be conscripted into purchasing green energy. I think we need to be up-front about these things. Many of us in the community choose green energy. There are many who do so for a number of reasons—because they feel that is the contribution they want to make by paying a little bit extra on their power bills. I would just put on the record my concern about the potential for an opt-out approach where effectively people end up buying something that they were not aware in the end that they were buying.
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