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

(—) (): There is not just a real lesson for states like Queensland and Victoria, as I referenced before, but a big lesson for those opposite in the Labor Party and for Mr Shorten from the costs and the failures that we have seen in South Australia. That of course is that they need to abandon their reckless policy of a 50 per cent renewable energy target that has no modelling behind it, no analysis of how they would meet it, no analysis of the cost of doing so and certainly no concept whatsoever of what it would mean to reliability across the National Energy Market, what it would mean to affordability for Australian households and what it would mean in terms of the capacity of the market to provide reliable, affordable energy to Australian businesses that rely upon such energy for jobs in the future. Our government is committed to meeting our emissions reductions targets, but it will not be doing so at the expense of affordability and it will not be doing so at the expense of reliability— (Time expired)