Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I know Senator Birmingham wants to speak further on the Save our Solar report, and I would like to add to some of the remarks I have previously made on the same report. I still find difficulty in coming to terms with the evidence submitted to the committee by the department, which indicated that the number of applications for the solar subsidy had increased since the budget announcement, an announcement made on budget night without any warning, we all remember. It is at odds with the evidence given by so many people at the hearing of this committee that I attended in Melbourne, when witness after witness from the industry, from the unions, from councils and from conservation groups said that there had been an enormous drop-off in contracts and in arrangements for installation of these solar panels.

There was evidence given on another day of that committee when ATA, one of the witnesses appearing, suggested that there will be a drop-off—there seemed to be no doubt from people within the industry. They explained that the department’s figures of an increase in applications for the subsidy may have been related to the fact that many people believed that the means test did not start until the new financial year and so had tried to get in between budget night and the end of June to get their subsidy.

There was also a thought that perhaps families whose joint income will be below $100,000 in the current financial year but may go higher than that in the following financial year were getting in this financial year, while they were still under the new threshold. There was also a suggestion that the publicity from the government’s sudden announcement may have alerted people who had not previously been aware of this subsidy scheme.

What the coalition is most concerned about with this almost secret arrangement to reduce the threshold to $100,000 is that it has cut out so many people in the salary bracket that would have provided the bulk of the installation of these solar panels. We need to recall that a family with, say, a motor mechanic and a partner who is a nurse or a teacher is not a wealthy family; however, their combined incomes would exceed the $100,000. Those people have been excluded from this scheme because they no longer qualify for the $8,000 subsidy that the Howard government provided to those wanting to install solar panels.

We have the ridiculous situation where the Prime Minister and Senator Wong are making a huge issue of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, and yet here was a scheme, put in place by the Howard government, that enabled average Australians—ordinary Australians, if I can use that word—to play their part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by putting a solar panel on their roof and cutting down on the use of carbon power. Why would you stop that? We are spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and soon to be billions of dollars, on an emissions trading scheme. It is a scheme that will tax just about every aspect of Australian life. I think when the public come to understand what the Rudd government has in store for them, with increases in tax following implementation of the emissions trading scheme, they will have a different view about it.

Average Australians could have played their part—they wanted to play their part—but the rug was pulled from under them by this very mean and secret decision that the Rudd government announced on budget night, without warning, to reduce the means test to $100,000. That is even more surprising when other government programs that are means-tested, rightly perhaps, pick $150,000 as the figure above which the subsidies or grants are not paid. Why $100,000 was picked is very difficult to understand from the evidence given to this committee. I hope that when the save our solar bill comes before the parliament the Labor Party will be able to support it to give back to those families earning over $100,000 the ability to apply for this subsidy, which will enable them to play their part in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of our country.