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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-04-07 Daily Xml
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ELECTRICITY (RENEWABLE ENERGY PRICE) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 24 March 2011.)

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (10:47): This matter has been before the house a number of times now over the last few years. The government introduced an electricity feed-in scheme which started on 1 July 2008. In the original legislation, the government had a statutory review which was to occur when the total installed capacity reached 10 megawatts. That occurred in May of 2009. The statutory review did not start until I raised the matter on public radio in this city in October 2009, and the then minister immediately announced that the review was being established and the review was to report to the government by the end of December 2009.

We heard nothing of the review, no response from the government, in the run-up to the 2010 election last year. Eventually we heard a response from the government in August of last year where the government set out its response to the review including some changes to the feed-in tariff that would be paid and indicated that, when the legislation came before the house, the government's response would be put into legislation and, from memory, that it would be backdated to that August date.

To date, we have seen no legislation, so the government has lost interest in this whole matter. As I said way back in early 2008 when we were debating the original legislation, the only interest that the government had in the feed-in scheme was to get a headline. It was about rushing in some legislation so that the Premier and his energy minister could claim that South Australia was the first jurisdiction to have a feed-in scheme and a feed-in tariff. They met that deadline, became the first state to have a feed-in scheme, and the government has shown no interest in the matter ever since, notwithstanding—

The Hon. M.F. O'Brien: I introduced a bill yesterday.

Mr WILLIAMS: Did you?

The Hon. M.F. O'Brien: Yes, I did.

Mr WILLIAMS: I apologise. The minister informs me that he introduced a bill yesterday—which I was unaware of. I congratulate the new minister. He has only been in the position for a matter of a month or two and he has done something that the previous minister failed to do in three years. I congratulate him and look forward to seeing the legislation before the house.

Notwithstanding that, the government's response (which was issued last August and, I assume, the legislation reflects that response) was again to impose the cost of an increased feed-in tariff on all electricity consumers and not impose any financial burden on electricity retailers who are making windfall profits by onselling green energy fed into the grid from small-scale photovoltaic generating systems, principally on domestic residences.

The bill that I have before the house would see electricity retailers paying for the electricity; paying the people who own the equipment that produced that electricity to feed into the grid wherefrom those electricity retailers onsell that electricity as green power. My bill would see those retailers paying the people who produced that electricity.

Before the electricity feed-in tariff system was initiated way back in July 2008, the electricity retailers were paying around about 20¢ for electricity which was fed in under these circumstances. Today at least one retailer pays nothing and it is my understanding that two other retailers pay about 6¢ per kilowatt hour, which is a lot less than what they used to pay. As soon as we introduced the feed-in tariff the electricity retailers took the windfall gains and walked away from their responsibility to pay for something which they were onselling—and my bill seeks to redress that and put the onus back on retailers to buy that electricity. I commend the bill to the house.

Second reading negatived.

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