Page 2788 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014
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balance the environmental, social and economic impacts of any policy we bring forward. I cannot stand here as a representative of my constituents who are struggling financially and commend a policy that is going to make life harder for these people.
In fact, it is an interesting position we find ourselves in today in terms of, I guess, a constituent inversion. Dr Bourke’s motion calls on us to end uncertainty for industry while the Liberals here are concerned for average families and believe that priorities for government should reflect the priorities of the average person. So it is the Liberals promoting the concerns of the average person while Labor appear to be most concerned about industry in this case. It is a very interesting situation. I encourage the government to be open and transparent and share with us the modelling that they have used. I commend the amendment to the Assembly.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Capital Metro) (11.21): I am pleased to stand here today in support of Dr Bourke’s motion on renewable energy and its role in the national capital and the broader region. I thank Ms Lawder for the psychological analysis of opinion polls, but no amount of twisting and turning will allow the Liberals to get off the hook on the fact that there is very strong support for renewable energy generation and for this Labor government’s renewable energy agenda across the community and, indeed, across the region and in many other parts of the country.
At a time when we have the federal Liberal government significantly rolling back support for renewable energy generation, rolling back policies that support a transition to a low carbon future—abrogating their responsibility to make sure that as a nation, as a society, we are prepared and ready for the implications of a changing climate—this jurisdiction, the ACT, is seeking to make sure its citizens are well prepared and ready to adapt to a low carbon future.
There is nothing more reckless than continuing to pin the energy needs of our citizens and the costs of that energy on fossil fuel generation. The cost of that fossil fuel generation will only continue to increase over time. If we refuse to make the transition to a renewable energy future, we are chaining citizens to those ever-increasing costs of fossil fuel generation. It is a reckless and irresponsible act. We need, as a society and as a community, to recognise that the sooner we transition to low-cost renewable energy generation, where once the up-front cost of infrastructure is met the fuel input is a free input, the better. You do not pay for sunshine or wind, but you certainly do pay for coal or gas, and we know how volatile those fuel prices will be now and into the future.
Look at what has happened with gas. As a community we are very vulnerable to movements in gas prices. Because we are now pursuing, as a nation, a significant export-led gas industry, we are paying what overseas economies are paying for our gas. Gas used to be a cheap fuel, but it is not anymore. Is it responsible of us, in a city like Canberra, where we use gas a lot in our household heating, for example, to continue to hold ourselves hostage to those types of variations in gas prices? Or should we have policy settings that allow us to transition away from that reliance, to reduce that reliance, and to provide greater price stability for energy for householders into the future?
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