STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (16:24): Most people have never heard of the Capacity Investment Scheme but it's an absolute pillar of net zero. This scheme guarantees revenue for selected solar, wind and battery projects. Now, when these projects make money, they keep the profits.

When they lose money, guess what? The taxpayer bails them out. Now, if renewables were cheaper, you wouldn't need this scheme.

But it's far worse than this. This is a scheme that skews the market clearly in favour of renewables and, worse, its secrecy means that we will never know the true cost of net zero. That's why I've submitted a private member's motion calling on the government to request the Auditor-General to undertake a performance audit of the scheme, including its government's procurement processes, management of risk and performance management.

The Parliamentary Budget Office says that finding the cost of the capacity scheme is almost impossible, and the government refuses to release assessment frameworks, evaluation criteria, value-for-money methodology used for the scheme. So here we have one of the biggest sources of government revenue as a single scheme and we can't see what it's supposed to do.

We can't see what it costs. This is entirely unacceptable for any scheme to be like this. The government seems to not care about this.

This is taxpayer money. We should know where it's going. We should know why it's being spent.