One has to ask whether the new Rudd government knows whether the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.

The core demographic for solar energy system purchases are households with additional discretionary income.

“It’s unrealistic to think people on low incomes, if they’re battling to pay for food or petrol, will go for a solar hot water system,” Russel Mourney, director of national solar panel installer The Solar Shop Australia, says: “It’s people with some discretionary income who are early adopters and have supported the industry to this stage.” Mourney stated that “On Wednesday morning we started getting calls from people signed up in the last few weeks and with applications not sent through, so we had lots of cancellations. We had at least 90 in the pipeline and now I think 60% to 70% will not go through, and we think we will see a drop of about 60% from the 2000 systems we would have expected to install this year.”

Treasurer Wayne Swan announced as part of Tuesday’s budget that a means test will now apply to the rebate home owners receive when they install solar panels on their homes, restricting it to households with an income below $100,000. The relatively low $100,000 household threshold set for the means test – compared to $150,000 for the baby bonus and family tax benefit B – will exacerbate the damage inflicted by the change.

This seems bizarre to me!

Is the Government’s compulsory carbon reporting to help the environment or just a tax grab from business? If they really care about the environment why cut the solar rebate??????

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Global Warming, Climate Change & Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.