Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As we know, and as I have said so many times in this chamber, the only governments who have failed the Australian people on the affordability and reliability of power are Labor governments. This is a fact. The only members who have failed the Australian people and particularly the South Australian people, the people of my home state, are Labor members, both state and federal. We know. I've lived through it. My community in Boothby have lived through it. We've lived through Jay Weatherill's big failed experiment, the experiment the South Australian people apparently had to have.

This week we've learned from the member for Port Adelaide that they knew exactly what they were doing on gas prices and the impact that would have on electricity prices in Australia. They oversaw the price per kilojoule of gas going from $3 to a whopping $12, something that our government is fixing.

It's fascinating to see the member for Port Adelaide and his and my South Australian colleague the member for Wakefield in here for once. They don't normally turn up when we talk about power, because they're embarrassed to do so, and they should be embarrassed, because what they have done is utterly failed the people of South Australia. I will keep saying this at every opportunity in this place: it was an absolute disgrace when the member for Port Adelaide described the blackout that happened in South Australia last September as a hiccup. It could not have been further from a hiccup. It put people's lives at risk. Flinders Medical Centre in my electorate of Boothby lost all power. The backup generator failed to work—again, another failing of the state Labor government, I'm going to say. It put lives at risk. We had people travelling in peak-hour traffic with no traffic lights. We had single policemen and policewomen standing in every single major intersection in Adelaide directing peak-hour traffic in terrible weather because of the state and federal Labor governments' failings on power. This is far more than a hiccup, and the manner in which the other side has behaved on this issue is absolutely disgraceful.

Now we know that Labor in Victoria are going down this path as well. I just say to the people of Victoria and communities in Victoria that this is what you have to look forward to: the most expensive power in the world, which is what we have in South Australia, and the most unreliable power in the world. State Labor are doing things like importing diesel generators to make sure that the lights and power won't go off over summer. The generators are going to burn 80,000 litres of diesel an hour. How's that for clean, green power and a clean, green approach to electricity generation in this nation? Labor are just frantically chasing green votes, and yet they're imposing diesel power on us. It's just an absolute disgrace.

But what really concerns me is not just the unreliability and the trauma that people were put through in South Australia; it's the cost. Households—mums and dads trying to raise their kids and give back to the community—are facing the most expensive power in the world in South Australia. Elderly people—pensioners, people who cannot afford these power increases—are facing the highest prices in the world, and what's Labor doing about it? Nothing. We, on the other hand, are doing a lot about this. There are a range of things we're doing—pumped hydro. We have some great projects proposed in South Australia. There is Snowy 2.0, which will increase the generation of the scheme by 50 per cent, adding another 2,000 megawatts of renewable energy to the national market. We're getting a better deal for people from retailers. They're contacting individual customers to let them know how they can save on their power bills, and we're looking at new and better ways to communicate to consumers how they can get the best deal. We're stopping power companies from gaming the system, which is really important, and of course, as I've mentioned, we're also making sure that the Australian people get access to gas before it is exported. Labor did not do that. We also have the ACCC reviewing retail electricity prices.

I want to finish by thanking the Minister for the Environment and Energy for visiting my electorate of Boothby last week during our two weeks at home in our electorates. We met with a range of businesses, and the impact of these prices is quite terrifying. I'm very concerned. We heard concerns that jobs are at risk because of these failed Labor government policies. (Time expired)

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