Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Education and Training (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator Hanson-Young today relating to renewable energy.

This motion is of course is in relation to the storms in South Australia some two weeks ago. These storms were some of the worst that our state has faced in 50 years, with gale force winds, flooding and incredible damage right across our state—so much so that 22 transmission towers were destroyed and, as we all know, our state was plunged into darkness with a blackout. While some areas of our state, mainly the metropolitan areas, had that power restored relatively quickly, within a matter of hours, some parts of our state remained without power for many days following.

In the midst of all of this—while we had gale force winds blowing, floods happening, homes and businesses being destroyed and emergency personnel and hundreds of volunteers out in our state trying to do whatever they could to help their neighbours, their friends and other members of the community whose homes had been destroyed and whose businesses were being damaged—we had some members of this parliament doing everything they could to use this opportunity for their own political means. We had the Minister for the Environment and Energy firstly try to blame the blackout in South Australia on our large reliance on renewable energy. We had one of our own senators, Senator Nick Xenophon, attacking renewable energy before anyone really knew exactly what was going on. Straight out of the blocks, people like Senator Xenophon, Barnaby Joyce and even the crazy senator that we have here from Queensland—