Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. The greatest threat to the jobs of the workers in the honourable member's electorate in South Australia is the highest priced and least reliable energy in Australia. Nothing has done more to undermine the jobs of factory workers and manufacturing workers in South Australia than the high prices of energy and the unreliability of that energy in the honourable member's state. He knows that is a direct consequence of what Labor Premier Jay Weatherill described as his great experiment. I'll tell the member for Wakefield what Jay Weatherill was experimenting with: the lives of his constituents—their livings, their jobs, their futures. What prospect do you have in a competitive world in a state which has the most expensive, least reliable energy in the OECD?

I'm glad the honourable member has given me the opportunity to respond to this, because, unlike his party, we have policies and plans for energy that will ensure that energy is reliable and that prices are lower. What was Labor doing about the price of gas? What was Labor doing? Nothing. They weren't thinking anything. They allowed huge export facilities to be built for gas from the east coast and were warned in 2012 by their own energy department and by AEMO that this was going to put pressure on the domestic market. It's all there in black and white. The honourable member for Port Adelaide knows all about it. They were given that warning. They ignored it; they did nothing. As a result we had a domestic gas market that was short of supply, prices went through the roof and electricity prices went up. A state like South Australia, so dependent on wind, so dependent on intermittent renewables, desperately needed firming power—they needed gas peakers more than anyone but they couldn't afford to run them, and they were closed, too. So, there you have the colossal failure of Labor policy in South Australia.

I'd say this to the honourable member: the message he can take to his constituents from me is this: we are standing up for them, we are not letting them down like Labor did and we are determined to ensure that they have competitive and reliable energy that will enable investment and the jobs that follow in his electorate and right across the nation.

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