Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

It seems today that it is very clear that the South Australian government did have alternatives. In fact, the offer was made to the South Australian government to keep the 546-megawatt Northern Power Station open for $25 million. How much is the South Australian government now going to spend on getting itself out of the mess? $550 million. So they could have invested $25 million and avoided the problems that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in loss to industry but instead they are now going to spend $550 million—22 times more than it would have cost to avoid the problem altogether. This is the type of recklessness that, sadly, we have come to expect all too often from the Labor Party that South Australia has suffered under and that South Australian businesses, communities and homes are living under the cost of today.