Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Minister for Sport. I refer the minister to media reports that show that multiple hospitals in New South Wales faced an influx of presentations to emergency departments during recent extreme weather events. How is energy security essential in delivering healthcare services across Australia?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Berowra, who, as a former board member of Mercy Health, understands just how important energy security is to health during times of extreme weather events. It is absolutely fundamental to maintaining secure supplies for ventilators, for life support machines, for dialysis machines and for operating theatres. Can you imagine the circumstance if, in an operating theatre during a critical operation, electricity supplies were to be disrupted? That is the fundamental importance of energy security to the health system in Australia.

There are two recent examples relating to the same extreme weather event and how it played out in different states in different ways. In early February, when there was an extreme weather event facing both South Australia and New South Wales, there were fears that in New South Wales the health system might have been disrupted. However, because of a stable grid and because of good planning, we saw continuous supply to the hospital system—

Mr Conroy interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Shortland!

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and continuous protection of life support machines—

Mr Conroy interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Shortland is warned.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and of dialysis machines and of ventilators, things which could simply not be more important.

Mr Conroy interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Shortland will leave under 94(a).

The member for Shortland then left the chamber.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

However, the same event at the same time in a different state—South Australia—played out in a different way, where hospitals in Millicent, in Mount Gambier and in Penola were all forced on to backup generation because they were forced to have load shedding because the South Australian grid was unstable.

Opposition members interjecting—

And I hear mentions of backup generators. The problem is, it does not always work. We know that in September the Port Augusta hospital had its power go down and then its backup generator go down, and that is the problem: the people opposite have no conception that if you really care about health you have to really care about a stable energy system. That is why the Prime Minister is responding to the South Australian energy debacle with a plan for the second great wave of the Snowy hydro scheme to create the greatest battery storage system in the Southern Hemisphere, increasing by 50 per cent storage that supplies to the grid the stability that is needed for our hospitals, for our health system, for our kidney machines, for our dialysis machines and for our ventilators. These are the reasons energy security matters. This is why an expansion of stability through the Snowy hydro scheme does not matter just to the electricity system, does not matter just to the energy system but matters also to the health system. If you compare that with the opposition's approach, which is to increase instability in the grid, decrease stability in the health system—(Time expired)