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

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Energy. I know the minister is aware that South Australians have the most expensive and unreliable electricity grid in the nation and last night, again, 200,000 people were plunged into darkness. It is imperative we quickly locate alternatives to supplement our baseload capacity and there has been considerable interest in building renewable energy platforms with storage in the Grey electorate. Can the minister report on the state of the South Australian electricity market and opportunities for the future?

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Grey for his question and acknowledge his deep concern about the state of the electricity markets not just in South Australia but right across the nation. In South Australia and indeed in his electorate, there are some of the most energy intensive users in the country, including BHP at Olympic Dam, Nyrstar at Port Pirie, Arrium at Whyalla and, of course, Yumbah Aquaculture, which is an abalone farm in Port Lincoln which employs more than 20 people which has seen its electricity bills increase by more than half a million dollars in last year alone.

In South Australia what has happened has been a disaster. Mid this year, we saw the wholesale electricity prices jump in one day from $500 to $14,000 per megawatt hour. We have seen a huge reliance on intermittent generation, namely solar and wind. More than 40 per cent of South Australia's power comes from solar and wind and an overreliance on the interconnector from Victoria. We have seen a blackout where 1.7 million people lost their power. We saw gridlock on the roads. We saw that people were kept in their homes and we saw major energy users lose their power. This is a disaster and we just had another wake-up call yesterday because at 1.15 this morning 200,000 South Australians lost their power, and BHP lost their power for four hours.

'We know this is a big experiment'—the words of Jay Weatherill, a big experiment that clearly has failed. Even BHP has said, 'The challenge is to reduce emissions and grow the economy which cannot fall to just renewable alone.' That is our message: the decision by the Labor Party to join with the Greens to immediately phase out coal-fired power stations is going to cost jobs, cost investment and compromise energy security. It has been criticised by people like Graham Richardson, criticised by Keith De Lacy, criticised by the Grattan Institute and many others who are watching the Labor Party leave behind the blue-collar workers in pursuit of green votes in the city. Only the coalition can be trusted to manage this transition. Only the coalition can be trusted to pursue a realistic renewable energy target. Only the coalition can keep the lights on. Only the coalition believe in keeping blue-collar jobs in our regions and not pursuing those green votes in the city like those opposite.