While the increased take-up of renewable energy may be a laudable policy objective, a levy on electricity customers to ensure some in the community receive a higher return on their investment in solar panels seems inequitable.
Not all electricity customers are in a position to take advantage of the scheme. They may rent their house and/or may not be in a financial position to access at least $25,000 (whether cash or borrowing), so less well-off Canberrans will end up subsidising those in a financial position to take advantage of the scheme.
I understand from the ACT department administering the scheme that the Australian Tax Office has advised that the income earned from selling electricity into the grid will be not be taxable. So not only will those who can afford the up-front costs have their investment subsidised by other electricity customers, they will also get a tax break on the income earned as well.
What other investments are eligible for such a delightful double whammy? Where is the equity? Though the proposed electricity levy is currently small, such levies tend to become entrenched and increase over time as Governments bend to lobbying for more subsidies.
If the ACT Government considers there is a need to subside the take-up of renewable energy, it should have made provision in the budget for renewable energy hardware suppliers to receive a clear and transparent subsidy to be phased out in say five years as an incentive to encourage them to reduce the capital costs.
Bill Crawshaw, Fadden
Minister Corbell says he's not embarrassed to buy electricity expensively from private photovoltaic arrays (Letters, July 3, p12).
Apparently it's not a half-baked, populist stunt. He says it's cheap, per capita.
But Minister Corbell has no need to write to remind us how happy he is to cost us money.
Had he actively promoted (rather than hidden) the allowable future usesof the Fyshwick DFO site before itsuction, he could have taken the estimated $60million he thereby sacrificed, installed us a commercial photovoltaic array and generated asimilar amount of electricity. Free.
And why, if his deluxe private feed-in tariff is so sensible, isn't it immediately available to all commercial low-emissions electricity providers?
Is he worried about generating too much green electricity and not enough populist hullabaloo?
Tom Waring, Ainslie
Puzzling Palestine
The Israeli machinations over decades towards the Palestinians are rather like those 3D picture puzzles that were once popular.
If you focus in a certain way, after a while and if you are determined a concealed picture emerges from the busy, confected patterns.
The ''real'' picture is as simple as it is striking.
Over here, and here, you can see neighbouring ''third world'' territoriesthat have had the life and infrastructure smashed out of them. And here you can see new apartment blocks, community facilities, and health clubs.
Cut through the noise and you can see the brilliantly layered nature of this campaign: overwhelming conventional weaponry regularly some would say criminally exercised against unequal neighbours, a nuclear arsenal to ward off states a little further afield who may seek to intervene in the cruelling process.
And an international lobbying machine to gloss over the rough edges.
So there it is: a 60-year land grab executed at quite an appalling cost, leaving those left with no alternative but to resist a ''wrong'' truly of biblical proportions.
The ''Naqba'', indeed.
Ross Kelly, Monash
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