Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week I visited one of my northern towns, Coober Pedy. It pains me to once again have to bring to the attention of the House the price of electricity in Coober Pedy. Last July in this place I moved a motion condemning the Rann Labor government for its $1 million reduction in the electricity subsidy for 13 regional remote communities. In fact, it is no longer the Rann government. Mike Rann was dusted off by some union officials—that has a familiar ring to it in this place. The motion condemning the government for its reduction in subsidies was passed without dissent.

Coober Pedy has what we call 'off-grid electricity'. All other states support their regional communities in the generation of off-grid electricity but the South Australian government has vacated that space. To that end, it announced last year a reduction in the subsidy, which was going to lead to an increase in power prices of over 100 per cent. There was public outcry and my motion was passed in this parliament. Instead the government implemented a three-year scheme with the price going up each year. Here we are in year 2 and the carbon tax has been added to the result. The result is an increase of a further 30 per cent—

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