Yesterday afternoon the Liberals’ Zed Seselja got around to asking where the promised solar power plant had gone in Simon Corbell’s solar city vision:
The ACT Labor party and the Greens have shown that their election promises and their coalition commitments are not worth the paper they are written on, after they scrapped their promise for a capital investment in a solar farm, Zed Seselja, Leader of the Canberra Liberals, said today.
“The dumping of this key environmental policy is just another example of Labor holding no regard to the commitments to the community and the agreement that keeps them in power,” Zed said.
“Instead of committing to their election promise, the Labor party is going to shift the costs of these projects onto Canberra households. The costs associated with the expansion of this scheme will be passed onto the very people who are already struggling with high electricity prices.
Zed notes that the feed-in tariff is costing $400 for every tonne of carbon reduced and wonders if there might be better bangs to be had for this sort of buck.
UPDATE: Zed’s since followed up demanding to know why he wasn’t informed about the change of policy until now and accusing the Greens and Labor of being secretive:
I find it remarkable that the Greens take photo opportunities when they have a meeting with the Labor Party, yet a $30 million dollar policy back flip is done in secret,” said Zed “The contempt for the community is astonishing.
“They claim they stand for transparency, yet admit they do deals with the Labor Party behind closed doors and in secret
“The political reality is simple: this is not a minority Government. This is majority coalition government by stealth. The $30 million dollars deal done behind closed doors is an absolute validation of this
In reply the Greens’ Meredith Hunter despairs of Zed’s confusion:
“At first I just assumed that Zed Seselja was playing politics, but recent statements have made it clear that he simply doesn’t understand what industry, the Greens and the Government know about incentives in the solar industry,” Ms Hunter said.
“The announcement yesterday of an expansion to the Feed-in-Tariff, which is the preferred incentive for industry to build large scale solar generation in the Territory, has somehow been described by Mr Seselja as “The dumping of this key environmental policy”.
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