Damian Drum (Murray, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It doesn't quite work in South Australia, it doesn't quite work in Queensland and it doesn't quite work in New South Wales. It will when we get Snowy Hydro 2.0 up and built, but the concept that pumped hydro or natural hydro can effectively be the battery for everybody, at the moment, doesn't work. At the moment we need base load and dispatchable electricity for when our families need it and when our industry needs it.

We understand that some of the plans around here are for just more and more renewables. It's going to make that other mix of the system, which is critical and which is the dispatchable power, even more expensive. There is no way of dodging this. The more you load up the system with renewables for when everything is going well—when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing—the more expensive it's going to be to rely on dispatchable power, whether it's gas-generated or coal-generated, to deliver the power and electricity when it's needed. This is an inescapable fact that the opposition are happy to gloss over because they want to keep sheeting home the fact that renewables are the answer to everything. We're hoping one day renewables will be, but at the moment, they're not. (Time expired)

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