Portfolio Media Releases

Rudd cuts Bayside green power

Article Categories: Goldstein Media Releases, Environment

Labor’s first Federal Budget has dealt a major blow to the fight to reduce carbon emissions by cutting off solar panel rebates to most Bayside households.

Federal Member for Goldstein, Andrew Robb, has slammed the Rudd Labor Government’s decision to switch off the solar power rebate to Bayside households which earn in excess of $100,000 a year.

It has been reported that some 7 out of 10 Bayside residents who have applied for the scheme will no longer be eligible under Labor’s new rules. Solar panel companies are now warning of job losses and fears about their viability, after customers learnt they faced paying an extra $8,000 for solar panels in their homes.

“The environmental credentials of the Rudd Labor Government have been left in tatters following its decision to means test the successful Coalition Photovoltaic Rebate Scheme,” said Mr Robb.

“Despite Labor’s green rhetoric, this decision to make it harder for Bayside residents to switch to solar power contradicts everything they have claimed to have stood for.”

“The scrapping of this program is arrogant disregard for hard working Bayside residents who want to make an investment in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Based on current installations and orders, Goldstein has the highest concentration of solar panels on homes out of the 150 federal electorates in Australia.

“Here was a successful program, delivering real results in cutting carbon emissions and one of the first acts of the Rudd Labor Government is to shut it down.”

“This is old style Labor politics of envy,” Mr Robb said.

The Coalition Photovoltaic Rebate Scheme is likely to cease in November this year and the Labor Government’s less supportive ‘Green Loans’ programme will not begin until April 2009. This will leave the solar panel industry and Bayside households in the dark. It is simply not good enough.

In 2006 Kevin Rudd, then a Shadow Minister, talking about the rebate scheme stated, "We've got 25,000 solar panels going up as a part of this project, why would you want to kill it?"

Good question Mr Rudd.

Media contact: Andrew Hudgson (03) 9557 4644 or 0404 020 896