The seventh of June 2011 will go down as a seminal day for the PV industry.
State Premier Barry O’Farrell announced that he would not proceed with retrospective cuts to the States Gross Feed in Tariff after intense lobbying, a huge media campaign and finally, acceptance that the Government had got their numbers wrong and made a mistake.
The win is considered to be of critical importance for the industry, consumers and future investor confidence.
However, what is most historic is that for the first time in my 20 years in the PV industry, the solar community has demonstrated that it has the ability, the capacity, the intelligence and the guts to take on a State Government – and to win.
Like a teenageson who topples his father for the first time, we have come of age and earned due respect thanks to our size, prowess and maturity. Perhaps Premier O’Farrell will offer us our first stiff drink.
We stuck to our principles and fought a battle of brinkmanship. Some said we could never win a head to head battle with such a formidable adversary and that our tactics were wrong. We had moments of self-doubt and questioned our motivations, the risks and the implications but we were resolute that there was an enormous issue of principle at stake.
We may never know all the factors behind such a monumental, arguably courageous decision by the Premier to back down on his first major test of strength since taking power only a few short months ago. Clearly, the minority parties and back benchers had a huge influence on the outcome and appropriate trade off deals could not be struck. And clearly, we had some luck on our side with the media who weren’t swamped with other big news during the initial phase of our campaign.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned and there is still a war to be won – we don’t have all the terms and conditions yet and we still need to develop a sustainable
program going forward for our industry. Nevertheless, the first phase is won
and we are confident we will be taken more seriously in the future.
Australian solar consumers, International companies and the investment community now have a critical role to play. We fought this
battle so your faith in our technology and our market would be retained, so
please take heed and help us grow the Australian PV industry once again.
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