Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President Gallacher, I want to reflect on the circumstance we find ourselves in at the moment in this country, and that is the parlous state with regard to our energy supply and particularly the insecurity of the energy supply in the eastern states—of course, including your home state of South Australia. I want to start with the observation that if you take a country which is the geographical area of America—mainland USA without Alaska—which has got the population of greater New York, about 23 million or 24 million people, the question becomes: how is Australia such a wealthy country on a per capita basis? People come up with all sorts of different solutions. The answer has always been two words, and those are 'cheap energy'. We have had cheap energy, and indeed, in your home state of South Australia, your then Premier Playford came up with the realisation that South Australia needed an advantage, and South Australia developed cheap energy.

What a lamentable circumstance we have today when your state, in fact, underwent a complete statewide blackout of power just recently. But the unfortunate circumstance we find ourselves in is that, over the last successive years, we have seen an erosion in Australia's cheap energy. We have seen an erosion in that singular advantage that we had. We saw the introduction of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. We saw the carbon tax. We have seen the burgeoning of renewable energy targets, which of course were originally an incentive of the Howard government back in 1997. But what is even more disappointing is that this is against an international trend. In the United States, for example, the technology of being able to source shale gas and discover shale gas over the last few years means that, for example, in 2013 the cost of electricity to an American manufacturer was half that of a German manufacturer, and manufacturing came back on shore. Today that figure has changed from being a half to a third. The cost of electricity for an American manufacturer today is one-third that of Germany, and we see a burgeoning of manufacturing in that country at a time when we have reversed what was the advantage of cheap energy.

We know Australia, mainly through Western Australia but also through Queensland, will go past Qatar in the next two years as the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas at a time when, regrettably, we have taken the decisions we have taken to actually add to the cost of manufacturing and the cost of consumers, be they residential, domestic, business, nursing homes et cetera.

Mr Acting Deputy President, let me give you the latest figures available from the International Energy Agency on the delivery of global energy. Oil is a 31 per cent contributor to global energy; coal, 29 per cent; gas, 21½ per cent; nuclear, five per cent; bioenergy, 10 per cent; hydro electricity, 2½ per cent; solar, 0.1 per cent; and wind, 0.4 per cent—four-tenths of one per cent. Yet we see the circumstance in this country where we are rushing towards getting rid of the greatest advantage we have had, and that has been cheap energy. In the week leading up to the election in Australia, Mr Acting Deputy President Gallacher, I made two public predictions relating to your home state. The first was that by July there would have to be a significant increase in the cost of electricity to consumers in South Australia to the tune of 15 to 18 per cent. I was wrong. It was 20 per cent. The second prediction I made was that South Australia would face a state-wide blackout of electricity. I did not think it was going to happen as early as it did, so I will make this prediction today: there will be another state-wide blackout of electricity this summer in South Australia. There you are. It is on record for you. Regrettably, the reason we find ourselves in this circumstance is the decisions of successive Labor governments, who, dare I say it, have unrealistically put increased targets in place for renewables. It was the—