It's the stupid country

Age
Tuesday 16/10/2007 Page: 13

Australian governments have little interest in developing new solar technology, writes Urs Walterlin.

THEY must be counting their blessings, the workers at CSG Solar AG in Thalheim, Germany. Demand for solar power is booming and the people in the eastern state of Sachsen-Anhalt are riding the wave of global change. So successful is the company in developing and manufacturing solar power technology, it recently started to operate around the clock.

Many people in the East had a rough time after the reunification of the two Germanys. The socialist economy was in tatters and there were few prospects for decent, well paid work. Then, in June 2004, came CSG Solar, first with only one employee. But soon demand for solar products expanded, and so did the need for labour. Today CSG Solar employs hundreds. Great for Thalheim. Bad for Australia.

These jobs could be in Horsham or Goulburn. "Crystalline silicon on glass" - solar technology is an Australian invention. It was developed at the University of New South Wales. But Australia lacked the determination and political will to effectively commercialise the brilliant invention. In 2004 CSG Solar purchased the rights. Aussie solar cells are now manufactured where staff eat bockwurst during their lunch breaks, not meat pies.

This is only one example of a phenomenon that surprises even long-term observers of this country. Be it the lack of superfast, cheap broadband everywhere, preventing new entrepreneurs from running a global business from the back of Bourke and breathing new life into struggling communities, or the failure to teach foreign languages in every school in the country, so future managers can say more than "yam cha" when they are trying to set up business in booming China, Australia seems willing to give away even the most obvious opportunities.

For 10 years, some of the most senior Australian politicians have called themselves "global warming sceptics". And they are still proud Kyoto-bashers. So it comes as no surprise that their sudden call to action fails to convince not only many observers, but experts too. A strong focus on so-called "clean coal" and the suggested construction of nuclear power plants look more like "greenwashing" the status quo. The solar power plant planned for Victoria, the so-called "Solar Cities" and the taxpayer-funded brochures asking us to switch off the flat screen TV - they look suspiciously like public relations exercises geared towards increasingly alarmed voters. Such projects certainly are important, but they are hardly the urgently needed kick-start to a fundamentally new way of thinking in a society addicted to plundering and wasting resources.

Meanwhile, Australian businesses wanting to grow by being part of the solution rather than the problem continue to be attracted by countries such as Germany and China. According to new research, solar technology companies are in the top league of Germany's businesses when measured against a set of indicators such as equity ratio and return on investment. Having to use cloudy Germany as an example for the success of solar power policy is quite bizarre.

Practically overnight, a government incentive system has created a new industry that is now top of the world. Last year, approximately 10,000 German companies were developing and manufacturing components for the photovoltaic and solar thermal energy market, employing 54,000 people. According to industry sources, this figure will climb to up to 200,000 by 2020. Thirty-five per cent of production goes into export markets; 70 per cent by 2020.

The Germans themselves are ferocious buyers of solar systems. Why? Owners can sell excess power back to the grid. That's how the average system is paid off within seven to eight years. Yet in Australia it takes between 15 and 20 years. Despite subsidies, the cost of solar power systems remains prohibitive.

"Why doesn't every house in Australia have to have solar power on the roof?" a 14-year old girl from Switzerland recently asked, uncomprehending. "It would make sense." Of course. The failure of the world's sunniest country to create irresistible economic stimuli for the renewable energy industry in order to become the world leader puzzles many observers. Not least because federal and state governments rightly spend billions for the development of other economic opportunities.

They certainly know that investment always flows in the direction where it is welcomed. But some politicians willingly allow hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs to be exported. Is it due to the "comfortable, lazy security of sitting on enough fossilised but dirty resources for hundreds of years", as one correspondent colleague thinks' Is it the iron grip traditional industries have on Australian politics' Or is it short-term thinking, the wish to be elected at the next election, at all costs. Perhaps it is the triumph of ideology and ignorance over reason and responsibility. The decision to build a pulp mill in Tasmania's Tamar Valley indicates that it is probably a mixture of all of these elements.

The damage the project and the continuing logging of native forests will do to Tasmania's highly valuable, sustainable environmental tourism, is an opportunity lost for future generations. Tasmania's reputation as a destination for business is already a victim. For international journalists who visited the island recently, it felt like being in a third world country where major aspects of public life are corrupted by an incestuous relationship between a merciless business and a morally bankrupt political class.

Even if the mill is as clean as Malcolm Turnbull asserts, why would European ecotourists fly around the globe if there is even only a perceived possibility that they will swim in water containing dioxin, drink wine tainted with chemicals and breath air polluted with toxins' They can do that at home, much cheaper, on their balcony, overlooking the autobahn.

Urs Walterlin is a Swiss-Australian foreign correspondent who reports from Australia and the South Pacific for newspapers in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.