| IT’s election time and nothing is sacred.Just ask Australia’s solar industry ~ it’s had resourced pillaged to finance a populist vote catcher to remove a few old cars off the road.Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced late last week ‘cash for clinkers ~ $2000 for anyone selling their pre-1995 banger and buying a more modern car.It takes effect from January 1; long after the election and consequently the chance of going down the road of most election promises (canned).The Prime Minister’s public servants estimated handouts would benefit 200,000 of the 2m owners of pre-1995 cars ‘down under’ and cost $394m over four years.That’s going to be paid for with $200m from the government’s solar flagship program and $150m from the solar hot water rebates program.The Prime Minister estimates a total of $520m will be made in cuts to existing carbon reduction programs including $150m off the carbon capture and storage program.In the same breath was mumbled no coal fired station would be built in Australia unless it was ready to bolt on carbon capture and storage.Wait a minute . . . in the 2010 budget the Labor government opted out of the FutureGen project which, with the US, was investigating carbon capture and storage project technology.So another nail of uncertainty is belted in the overall carbon reduction program.This follows the insulation scandal, the green loans affair, the solar rebate fiasco, cancellation of FutureGen involvement and now more uncertainty for the solar sector.Since the government came into power three years ago there has only been one wind farm built and a few government buildings with solar panels on their roofs.Nothing major has been announced and this is despite the government separating the renewable energy certificates program to strip out household solar grants leaving industry with its own recs scheme untainted by those pesky householders.On the basis of all this we recommend investors start looking for shares in candle-manufacturers. |
