Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Berowra, who, as a former board member of Mercy Health, understands just how important energy security is to health during times of extreme weather events. It is absolutely fundamental to maintaining secure supplies for ventilators, for life support machines, for dialysis machines and for operating theatres. Can you imagine the circumstance if, in an operating theatre during a critical operation, electricity supplies were to be disrupted? That is the fundamental importance of energy security to the health system in Australia.

There are two recent examples relating to the same extreme weather event and how it played out in different states in different ways. In early February, when there was an extreme weather event facing both South Australia and New South Wales, there were fears that in New South Wales the health system might have been disrupted. However, because of a stable grid and because of good planning, we saw continuous supply to the hospital system—

Mr Conroy interjecting—

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