Grievance Debate

SOLAR FEED-IN TARIFF REVIEW

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:25): I want to talk about electricity prices but I will take the opportunity to briefly talk a little bit about caretaker convention because I think the government has got it very wrong. Let me tell the house that the Premier suggested that the commonwealth government costs, both government and opposition, electoral promises under the caretaker convention. The reality is there is a specific piece of legislation which gives the power to the federal Treasury to cost both government and opposition electoral promises. My understanding is that those powers have never been used but even if they were used there is a specific—

Mrs Redmond: Which doesn't exist here.

Mr WILLIAMS: No, and the law does not exist here. That particular piece of legislation specifically prohibits the Treasury from informing the results of those costings to the minister. They are actually published so that everybody gets them. They are not given to the minister simply because that would give one political party, the party that was in government, an advantage. In fact, I will read from the Australian Public Service Values and Code of Conduct in Practice from the commonwealth Public Service, in particular from the section on caretaker arrangements in the election period:

...a number of the practices are directed at protecting the apolitical nature of the [Australian Public Service] and avoiding the use of Commonwealth resources in a way that advantages a particular party.

That is what it is about, and this government just does not get it. It is about fair play. That is something that this government does not understand—fair play. It is about an apolitical public sector—a public sector that can give advice to any government without fear or favour—and they just do not get it.

I want to turn now to electricity prices because I thought the Minister for Energy, minister Koutsantonis, on the radio this morning was quite misleading when he said, 'I think it is fair that the people of South Australia know why we have this rebate scheme,' and this is the feed-in tariff, 'and why it is for 20 years and why it is so much. We wanted to cut it off for five years and have a much smaller number of people who have solar inverter schemes on 44¢.'

Let me inform the house of the facts. What the government wanted was to have them on 54¢, not 44¢, so the amendment that I was very proud to move and able to convince our colleagues in the other place to support was to get rid of the government's intent to add another 10¢ to the scheme. I understand that that would have cost South Australian householders, the long-suffering electricity consumers in this state, another $90 million. The minister had the temerity to suggest that it was the opposition's fault.

The house will recall when the government introduced the feed-in scheme—remember back at the end of 2007 when the bill went through the parliament so the then Premier could go and speak at a solar cities conference here in Adelaide and beat his chest about being the first jurisdiction to have a solar feed-in tariff? That is what is was all about. Then they took their eyes off the ball. They had said they would have a review in a little while when it gets to 10 megawatts of installed capacity or 2½ years and we will have a review to see how it is going.

This happens to be the review that I have in my hand. One of the recommendations of the review was that it is recommended that the government consider implementing a scheme cap similar to the Victorian scheme at which point the scheme would be closed to new entrants.

Mrs Redmond: When was that?

Mr WILLIAMS: When was that? This review was completed in 2010. It was given to the government and they sat on it for about nine months. To explain what the Victorian cap is, Victoria has implemented their premium scheme with two clearly defined scheme caps and allows the minister to declare a scheme capacity day when either of these is reached. The first cap is for a maximum installed capacity of 100 megawatts; the second cap is when the scheme's average cost per customer of electricity per year exceeds $10, whichever occurs first. The maximum that electricity customers will get slugged in Victoria is $10 because they have a decent scheme because they knew what they were doing, but this government refused to accept the recommendation of its own committee.

Today lucky South Australians will be paying $70, not $10 as they would be if they were in Victoria but $70, because this government just took its eye off the ball. It does not really care about long-suffering householders in the state trying to meet their bills. They have lost touch with South Australians and this is just one area where they have lost touch.