Tuesday, 30 July 2024

Energy policy

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (17:55): (999) My matter for attention tonight is for the Minister for Consumer Affairs but will be of considerable interest to the Minister for Energy and Resources too. It relates to the regulatory impact statement (RIS) regarding the proposed regulations for rooming houses and rental properties and some of the new proposals that the government has brought forward under its Gas Substitution Roadmap. The Gas Substitution Roadmap is a plan to ban gas effectively in all circumstances, right across a whole front. But this narrow part here actually seeks to ban gas and has a number of other impacts in a series of aspects of rental properties and imposes a set of obligations and requirements on landlords.

The government has produced a regulatory impact statement, and I must say I am shocked at how poor the regulatory impact statement is. It is actually a shoddy piece of work. I want to be quite clear: I do not think it is up to scratch. It makes calculations, for example, that the cost in 2025 of imposing these matters is about $5519, and yet there are other calculations out there that show that the cost is much greater – up to $35,000 in fact for properties under the Frontier Economics work that has been done by Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association of Australia. So these are very significant differences, and the impacts are also quite severe when it comes to outcomes for the community.

For example, with a gas appliance – a heating system that might do five or six points in a three-bedroom house in the suburbs, that model – if that gas appliance breaks or for whatever reason needs to be replaced, you will not be able to replace it with a gas appliance again. You will have to put in a reverse-cycle air conditioner, but you will be allowed to put in one, just in the lounge. You will not get heating in the bedroom; you will be back to the 1960s with chilly, frozen bedrooms where kids will have to be wearing layers and layers of socks and extra layers because they will be so damn cold. That is not modelled in this RIS. It is a weak RIS. It is a RIS that is not up to scratch, and there is a real question about how this RIS process is operating here.

What I am seeking from the minister today, and the minister for energy would also have some views on this, is to release the modelling behind the Deloitte calculations – the modelling has not been released – and because of the shoddy nature of the RIS to pause the RIS and stop this process so that there is proper examination. This has been rushed. The government is in a headlong ideological rush. They need to pause it. They need to release the secret modelling behind the Deloitte work. I have written to the ministers and sought that modelling, but they are yet to provide it.