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

I thank the member for Indi for bringing forward this topic for the matter of public importance today. It is very important, and with the delivery of the report from Alan Finkel it would appear that we are very close to having that plan that you wish for.

One of the things that has been touched on a couple of times in this debate is South Australia. Recently I was in a meeting and it peeved me to have to say that the rest of Australia is very lucky that they have South Australia: it is the smallest mainland economy, and if you are going to stuff up the electricity anywhere, it should be in the smallest economy. We have a disaster in South Australia at the moment. If it happened in New South Wales it would drag the whole of Australia down with it. That is just how bad it has been. I have been closely watching this situation for quite some time. In 2016, for instance—things have changed a bit now, and I might get to that—South Australia had a wholesale price that was more than double Victoria's. For the first four months of 2016 we still had the Northern Power Station. All the discrepancy, all the change, happened after that time.

South Australia currently hosts about 50 per cent of Australia's wind generation capacity. About 60 per cent of that 50 per cent was in my electorate of Grey. Last year that huge bevy of wind farms delivered about 47 per cent of South Australia's electricity—47 per cent from renewables. One would think that is very admirable, but the problem is that the overabundance of renewable electricity has actually destroyed the business case for the power generators that keep the lights on when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining. The more of these wind farms that you put in place, in more diverse parts of the region, the less likely it is that you get these blackouts. But unfortunately the fewer days of the year that are required, the fewer days of the year that the base load generators can actually make a dollar. So, the more that fills in, the more it undermines the base load generator—as it did in the case of Alinta, to the point that they could not operate. And then of course we find that the wind does not blow 365 days a year.

In 2012 I had a meeting with the Australian Energy Market Commissioner, and I said: 'If Port Augusta goes offline, if the Alinta power station at Port Augusta is allowed to close before its use-by date'—and it had about another 15 years of useable life left in it—'the lights will go off in South Australia. We'll be in big trouble.' I was assured by the commissioner at the time, 'No, Mr Ramsey; we're just in the final touches of upgrading the interconnector to Victoria, and we are absolutely confident that once that's done South Australia can operate well with the Norther Power Station.' Boy, how was that? That was just completely wrong, and now we have been left in this unenviable position where we are the demonstration plant for the rest of Australia on how not to do it.

We are doing some good things there. I am very pleased that in the budget and leading up to the election I was able to announce that the government would be supporting a solar-thermal storage plant in Port Augusta. The Prime Minister has announced that we are backing a $450,000 feasibility study into pumped hydro, also in the Port Augusta region. And, interestingly enough—and I think I will bring this topic in; last week I spoke in Adelaide at an international uranium miners conference—Australia exports around 7½ thousand tonnes of uranium a year; it is one third of our energy exports, just in 7½ thousand tonnes. It replaces 140 million tonnes of coal on a worldwide basis, which is about 380 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. We do not get much credit for that now, do we? And it is interesting that this technology that actually has the ability to deliver large reductions of CO2—right around the world, or in our own country—we do not even discuss in this country. We cannot even get it on the agenda. It has become such a poisonous political tool—of those of the far Left, in particular—that the lies and deception are so deep that we cannot even speak intelligently about it, and that is a great shame for the nation. (Time expired)

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