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

Sadly, the home state of Senator Fawcett, of me and of Senator Farrell opposite is, of course, the canary in the coalmine when it comes to what has happened with energy, and it's been a sad and sorry story.

Senator Farrell interjecting—

It's no wonder Senator Farrell wants to run interference, because South Australian power prices are 20 per cent more than in the rest of the country. Last year South Australia received around 50 per cent of its power from intermittent renewables, which caused not only reliability issues but extreme price volatility as well. We've seen a state government there which pretends the solution is to have a battery—a battery that will provide less than one per cent of the state's needs on any given day and that will have diesel generators which use some 80,000 litres an hour of diesel, the dirtiest fuel available. It's remarkable that these are the solutions the South Australian Labor government has on offer, whereas we are outlining clear plans to provide reliability and certainty and put downward pressure on prices for households and businesses.