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It is appropriate, as this government passes its second birthday, that we should measure its rhetoric against its performance. Unfortunately, we are likely to find some large gaps. In the short time I have available to me, I will focus on just one commitment—and what a good one it was. In this time when the government is bursting to lead the world in the reduction of greenhouse gases and to promote the Australian government as the greenest on earth, it should come as no surprise when it announces investment in environmentally friendly projects—projects which, it assures us on a regular basis, will save the Great Barrier Reef.
On 19 February 2008, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, jointly with the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, took no less an opportunity than the 3rd International Solar Cities Congress, in Adelaide, to announce the building of a $7.1 million solar power station for Coober Pedy, in the north of my electorate. Certainly both ministers have some talent, and in the area of hyperbole they excel. I quote Minister Garrett:
“This is a groundbreaking solar project – a spectacular example of the Rudd Labor Government’s commitment to a clean energy future,” Peter Garrett said.
“There will be 26 dishes, each one 14 metres high and tracking the arc of the sun – an Australian design, delivering the nation’s most efficient solar power station.
“When it’s completed at the end of 2009, it will generate about 1860 megawatt hours a year – 13 per cent of Coober Pedy’s total electricity requirements. …
Not bad, is it? You can imagine how excited the locals were. And it all made sense, because if solar power makes sense anywhere it would be in the middle of the desert, where the locally generated power costs 80c a kilowatt hour. Really, if this plant does not make economic sense in Coober Pedy, it probably would not work anywhere.
With less than six weeks to go to the end of the year, am I here to tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I went to the opening of this magnificent plant? No. I am sorry to report that nothing, not one thing, has happened. The power plant is due to be up and running in six weeks at the latest, and it has not even started. In fact, I believe it will never be completed. Certainly the locals have lost faith. You would think that, after such a high-profile announcement, if the government were not going to build the solar power station then they would at least make some kind of public announcement. But no. All we have is silence.
I placed a question on notice with the minister on 11 August seeking information about the construction of the solar power station. I have not yet received an answer. On 26 October I raised the matter with the Speaker in the House, and he committed to writing to the minister and requesting that he reply to my question. Still I have no reply. It seems the spin cycle is malfunctioning. When will the minister and the government be honest with my electorate and have the intestinal fortitude to publicly admit to this overblown and exaggerated spin? Quite frankly, this is a disgrace. The minister’s treatment of the Coober Pedy community in the Grey electorate is both arrogant and appalling. I say to the minister just this: answer my question: is the project dead or not?
There are unfortunately too many other examples where the government has failed to meet its high-flying rhetoric. National broadband was to be well into construction by now and to cost the taxpayer just $4.5 billion. In reality it has not even started. The government has committed $43 billion and it does not even have a plan, except for the compulsory takeover of Telstra. The Prime Minister promised that, if the hospitals were not fixed by now, they would be subject to a Commonwealth takeover. Well, they clearly are not fixed, and the government is sitting on its hands. Mr Deputy Speaker, you can expect the opposition over the next few weeks to be raising the overpromising and underdelivery of this government, as part of its second anniversary present.
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