If it wasn’t so tragic, you’d be tempted to laugh out loud! In Canberra’s latest instalment in a growing litany of failed environmental policies, they’ve pulled the pin on the solar panels rebate (SHCP).

Three weeks before the official date of 30/6/09 and with eight hours notice. It smacks of contempt and complete disregard for all the participants in the industry; retailers, installers, suppliers and, not least, the “working families” of Australia. Better still, it was announced in a joint ministerial release on the morning of Tuesday 9 that, at 4pm on the same day, the SHCP would end. Whilst delivering the coup-de-grace to the generous $8000 rebate introduced by their predecessors in the dying months of the Howard government, Garrett and Wong, (why is it that the former invariably delivers the “bad” news and the latter the so-called “good” news?) the release attempted to put the most positive spin, under the ironic headline “Government continues to grow renewable energy industry”. Surely this deserves recognition in the Guinness Book of Records.

Apparently the SHCP had been too successful. Sorry, I thought the goal of government policies was to be successful. Too many Aussie battlers had finally seen the (sun) light and woken up to the fundamental, self-evident truth that, for most of them, most of the time, there’s the world’s most abundant and free energy source bouncing off their terracottas. What other countries, less generously endowed with this solar resource, had been harnessing for decades, we in the wide brown land, had finally tweaked to. It wasn’t an initiative capable of saving the Howard government, but it was one to kick-start the stalled solar industry in the Antipodes.

Given that we now have an Australian government hell-bent on dishing out billions to stimulate the economy, wouldn’t a few more millions to the SHCP to prolong the program, at least to 30/6/09, be taxpayers’ dollars well-spent? Why, there may even have been another, more long-term benefit. The now 100% imported PV panels from poor, undeveloped countries in Asia, may have been, at least partially, replaced by a domestic, green, manufacturing industry, and jobs with a future!

We once led the world in developing solar power. It’s tragic that a succession of governments of both persuasions have seriously dropped the ball on this exciting sunrise industry. We’ve lost our best talent to more enlightened countries and now desperately need to play catch-up.

Prematurely and abruptly terminating the current successful rebate scheme sends a totally negative and short-sighted message to the fledgling Australian solar industry and beyond, to the wider community. Most of the players in this benighted sector are small businesses who are sufficiently flexible to quickly increase their workforces; more jobs! Aren’t we in an unprecedented period of preserving and growing jobs?

Perhaps it’s too much to hope for, but maybe those responsible for these inane and contradictory policy changes, could get out of their offices and actually talk to those on the ground (and roofs) across Australia. It’s not good enough to switch to the much more complicated and less attractive solar credits received which will see the net benefit, for most installers of solar systems, halved! Now that’s a policy guaranteed to “grow renewable energy industry” in Australia. But, on reflection, why should any of us be surprised? Remember previous SNAFU, such as the car LPG conversions, superannuation (which no government can resist “tinkering” with) and now the farce of net versus gross feed-in tariffs. But more of that another day, another blog!