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

Renewable energy undoubtedly is a wonderful thing. In South Australia, we have led the nation in the establishment of renewable energy. In fact, there is 2,400 megawatts of installed capacity in South Australia. But there is a bit of a rider here. While we've got 2,400 megawatts of installed capacity, AEMO will not allow the wind generators to generate more than 50 per cent of that at any one time. When I drive around my electorate, which hosts many of these wind farms, it's one of the reasons that, when the wind seems to be strong enough and the price is good enough, they are still not turning. The reason they are not allowed to operate is that the grid, without some base-load generators—like gas in South Australia's case—is too unstable.

South Australia has led the charge on renewable energy, and I think there's a lesson here for the rest of Australia. Around 70 to 75 per cent of our electricity is coming from renewable energy. We have double that of the next mainland state. I might say your state, Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie, is in front of that, but you are running on historical hydro assets. But, for the mainland, South Australia leads the charge at around 74 per cent. The next state is Victoria. They have half that, around 32 per cent.

It's not the only thing that South Australia had led the charge on. Not only do we have double the next state's renewable energy but we have, by a margin of 50 per cent, Australia's highest retail price. You cannot disconnect the two events. It's not possible to say that South Australia has 75 per cent renewable electricity, but it's just a quirk of nature that somehow our retail prices are 50 per cent higher than the next state, which is New South Wales, by the way.

This is having an unbelievably detrimental effect on South Australia and our industries, our manufacturing industries in particular. I met with a number of rather large ones in recent times that are bemused by the fact that, in a place where we have adequate renewable resources, also fossil fuel resources and, of course, nuclear resources, somehow we not only are leading the nation but are right up amongst those in the world on electricity prices. The issue really is—and I did hear the previous member for Bennelong interject, talking about his power prices—that there is an embedded and hidden subsidy system that supports renewables. That is why a wind generator, or a solar cell for that matter, can sell electricity into the market at a profit when the wholesale price is minus $60 a megawatt. They sell, at a profit to them, at minus $60 a megawatt hour.

What makes up the difference? It is the retailers, who are forced to buy this energy off the generators at a negative price, who then slip it onto our retail bills; that's why South Australia has such high retails bills. But it's not detailed on our retail bills. It doesn't tell us the reason your retail bill is so high is that we are paying a subsidy to the wind generators that have cut off the traditional forms of generation. I think any system that is so confusing that the man on the street can make no sense of it all is pretty difficult. If you've got a long afternoon, I'll explain to the parliament how the bidding stem works; it's a complete mystery within itself. It's hiding the reality and its punishing industries along the way, which is why we have that higher price.

This bill is about giving the minister—it's an oversight fixing up a problem from before, perhaps—more power to approve offshore wind. I've visited Germany. I was very interested in their Energiewende, which is their transition from fossil fuels to renewables. I have a friend in the German parliament who is beside himself at the moment at the speed at which they are losing industry in Germany. It is being shipped out to countries that don't care so much about emissions, it would be fair to say. When I read up and when I checked when I was there—it was a little while back now—basically, offshore wind generators cost about three times the price of onshore wind generators. Why on earth would someone build them offshore if they're more expensive to build? That obviously it has to feed back into the price at some stage.

The reason is—particularly in Germany but also here in Australia, we're finding now—that people don't want to be looking at them. They want renewable energy, but they don't want it on their patch. The previous speaker just touched on that, somewhat. We don't see wind farms in and around capital cities. We don't see them in Adelaide on the Mount Lofty Ranges. But we do see them when we get further north and out of Adelaide, in the hills around Burra or Port Augusta. It's okay to have them up there, but we certainly don't want them where the general public has to look at them. It's pretty much the same with solar farms. Some of my farmers welcome the wind farms; they pay pretty well per tower installation. Not so much do the rest of the community, as a rule, because they get to look at the turbines and they largely don't get any financial benefit. And they're not big employers. In the end, there's a fair bit going on when they're constructing them. I was only recently looking at some farms that have been constructed around Burra, which is a beautiful part of the world, and the mess they have made on the tops of the hills. They've ripped out native vegetation, which is hundreds of years old. It's disgraceful, really—nothing else. A farmer would never be allowed. We have non-clearance rules in South Australia. They've been there for 30 years. Farmers aren't allowed to clear their land, but it seems that, of course, windfarm operators are. They're all in the country.

It makes you wonder where we're going here in Australia with our energy policies overall. Last week, we had three industry groups come out and implore the government to slow down the closure of fossil fuel. They said that Australia will not meet the 82 per cent target for 2030, which the government set for itself. I don't think there's much doubt about that. Not only are wind and solar approvals at a low point—the government has trumpeted them, but they are actually stuck with all kinds of approval problems at the moment—but also the thousands of kilometres of transmission lines that the government has designated are meeting local hostility. The government has worked to try and overrule local opinion here, again, and that's not really taking the community with you. If these things were so good, people would open the gate. It seems also that green hydrogen has hit the wall after an initial surge of great enthusiasm when we see Twiggy Forrest of Fortescue walk away from green hydrogen in Australia and say that he thinks the government should keep investing in it but he's not going to, thank you very much. AGL have walked away. In South Australia, we have the state government intending to build a green hydrogen plant in Whyalla and run an electricity generator off of that. Only this week, we're seeing the Premier taking issue with GFG Alliance, and there may be good reasons to do so, over a whole lot of issues. But let me point out that, when the hydrogen plant was proposed by the South Australian government, there was no talk of an offtake agreement with anyone else. They were going to use the hydrogen themselves, for their plant. My understanding is that they've ordered the generators but they haven't ordered the electrolysers. I think the state government had thought they would build it. They put down a budget figure—I don't think they'd scoped it at all, from what I'm told by industry insiders—of around $600 million. I can't find anyone in the industry who thinks they'll build it for less than double that, and I think the reality of green hydrogen is starting to sink in around the world.

I make the point that about a dozen years ago in South Australia we were the epicentre of hot rocks. We were told very confidently at that time that South Australia would be running on hot rocks by the middle of the 2020s. There's not one hot rocks facility, because in the end, after the initial enthusiasm, the costs actually beat the projects. You just could not find a cheap enough way of developing the hot rocks industry to generate electricity. It would have been perfectly clean electricity. So would nuclear generated electricity, as far as that goes. It would have been perfectly clean. It would have worked well. It was just way, way too expensive. It seems that that may be the path for green hydrogen, as much as we all hope it will happen—and I hope it will happen. it would be wonderful for my electorate if some of the projects that have been proposed get up. It would be wonderful for the world and for generating electricity. But it has to be at a price that is at least somewhere near being competitive with current electricity-generating systems. Otherwise, we won't do anything in Australia. We just will not be able to afford it. At the moment, we're seeing cafes closing up, and they're blaming their electricity prices. As for manufacturing, I have a couple of very large mineral processors in my electorate, and I know how much they are struggling with the cost of energy at the moment, particularly the electricity prices.

Minister Bowen has told us we're going to need 22,000 solar panels a day—somebody should line them up on a patch of ground and let people get their heads around it—and 40 seven-megawatt wind turbines a week. So they're looking to push for offshore wind at three times the price and have found that communities are no happier with those proposals than they were with the ones on the land, given the impact on the fishing and tourism industries.

There are alternatives. Last week I had the pleasure of going to Port Augusta and listening to Miss America 2023, Grace Stanke, a nuclear scientist and engineer, talk about her life, how she got to be an engineer in a nuclear plant and what a fan of nuclear energy she is. She explained to us all the things that happen around us that are powered by nuclear energy in one form or another or made with nuclear isotopes—things like smoke detectors and the radiotherapy that saved her father's life and perhaps mine as well. She spoke of how she enthused she was as a young woman about the fact that this source of energy already does so much good in our society. Why wouldn't we take it and do more good with it by providing cheap, clean, emission-free electricity to the world?

It's very rewarding for me, because I've had some communication with the Port Augusta community and I'm finding very low levels of resistance there. I'm not saying they're welcoming it with open arms at this stage, but they are more than happy to sit down and have an intelligent conversation about it. Having government members or their associates circulate pictures of three-eyed fish is contemptible, quite frankly. We should be having a more mature debate in Australia about these important issues than that.

This legislation is about a ministerial override, and that's the kind of thing that should scare all of us all the time. It's being jammed through in the dying days of this parliament, it must be said. This is probably the third last sitting day of this parliament, and the government want to get it through in an awful rush, against the will of communities—communities that are not keen to host these offshore wind platforms, which threaten their tourism, threaten the scenic beauty of coastal communities and threaten fishing communities, whether those threats are real or imagined. I guess that beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, but it's fair to say that there are concerns in those communities, and it's quite clear that the government has not run a thorough consulting process and taken the communities with it. It's very important. If governments want to lead the Australian public they should be prepared to speak with them and take their views on board. I'll be opposing the legislation.

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