Page 1930 - Week 05 - Thursday, 3 May 2012
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Members interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: The behaviour in the chamber is deteriorating by the minute. The next person who opens their mouth while Mr Corbell is on his feet will be warned. We will hear the minister in silence.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (12.05): Mr Seselja has raised again this foolish, misguided and just plain false claim that big businesses are eligible for assistance under this scheme. They are not eligible for assistance under the Victorian scheme, which this bill is based upon, and they are not eligible under this scheme either. That can be highlighted in a couple of ways.
Firstly, it can be highlighted by the fact that even a small branch office of a large company in Canberra is a big energy user. It is a big energy user because big companies have big electricity contracts. They do not have individual accounts for each office; they have a single big electricity contract, or a series of big electricity contracts, to purchase their electricity and energy needs. They do not try and deal individually with different retailers across jurisdictions. They have a series of big contracts. They are big energy users. Clearly Mr Seselja fails to understand that.
Further, the list of eligible measures outlined in the regulatory impact statement are specifically designed for households in the first instance. They are designed for households, not for businesses, and the government has made it clear that the expansion of this scheme to small and medium businesses is subject to the production of a similar detailed regulatory impact statement that outlines the costs and benefits of doing so.
We know that these schemes are very successful for small and medium enterprises—for butchers, for the local fruit shop, for the local hairdresser. There is a whole range of measures that can be implemented that reduce the electricity bill of those types of premises. That is why the Victorian scheme has been expanded to include small and medium enterprises and that is why this legislation creates the framework to deliver the same sort of scheme here in the ACT, subject to a detailed regulatory impact statement.
These changes to the legislation that we are debating in this detail stage make it clear that we are focusing very much on ensuring that the large retailers will have the obligation to deliver this energy efficiency service to households and in turn to small and medium enterprises. But it is wrong of those opposite to claim that somehow this is a subsidy from households to big businesses. At the very least that belies their lack of understanding of the structure of the energy market here in the ACT and the fact that the majority of users of electricity in the ACT are in the commercial sector, not in the household sector. So the pass-through costs are borne in the majority by the majority users of electricity, which is the commercial sector, not the household sector. That means that it is those big energy users in the commercial sector who are doing the great bulk of subsidising the delivery of energy efficiency to low income households, to renters, to average weekly income earners, who deserve assistance, who deserve help in reducing their electricity costs, improving their energy efficiency and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
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