Page 4447 - Week 12 - Thursday, 26 October 2017
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and Youth Affairs. At a private meeting on 22 February 2017 the committee resolved to conduct an inquiry into the extent, nature and consequence of insecure work in the ACT. At that time, the committee set a reporting date of 31 October 2017.
In light of the breadth of the terms of reference and the high level of interest from the public, the committee has held three public hearings, including one late last week. In order to give the evidence, including the additional evidence from public hearings, due consideration, the committee has resolved to extend its reporting date to the last sitting day in February 2018.
Executive business—precedence
Ordered that executive business be called on.
Electricity Feed-in (Large-scale Renewable Energy Generation) Amendment Bill 2017
Debate resumed from 14 September 2017, on motion by Mr Rattenbury:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MS LEE (Kurrajong) (12.00): The bill before the Assembly has two major impacts: the surrender of feed-in tariff entitlement provisions and the reasonable costs of the feed-in tariff scheme provisions. I will speak to both of these in turn. As it stands, generators who have signed on to the large-scale renewables program have a right to surrender their entitlement to the feed-in tariff, or the FiT, with essentially no reason or consideration. Presumably, this is a possibility in case the market price rises and the agreements between these generators and the government cease to be the highest profit option.
The provisions in clause 4 and the associated regulations require generators who wish to surrender their entitlement to give notice to the minister and give the minister additional powers to set the time of effect of the surrendered entitlement. This allows the minister to consider the circumstances of the original contract and to take steps to source renewable energy from an alternative generator to fill the gap so that the ACT’s tripartisan commitment to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020 is not compromised.
During briefings I was advised that these changes were, in effect, to provide uniformity of conditions in contracts for all generators who had been successful in reverse auctions held for FiT entitlements. Whilst these provisions technically affect all large-scale generators receiving a FiT entitlement, these changes are primarily directed to the first round of reverse auctions. I understand that generators involved in later reverse auctions have these mechanisms entrenched in their contracts.
The directorate confirmed that they are not anticipating any significant changes to the market that might encourage a generator to want to surrender their current entitlements, and the government has not been approached by any generator signalling
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