Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I totally support moving to a clean energy future, Senator Wong, but to pursue such a policy without considering the transition process that needs to occur is totally irresponsible. So we now find a totally avoidable disaster occurring in South Australia.

Let me paint a little picture of what it looks like in South Australia at the moment. We have no real base load power, so we're totally reliant on the eastern states when we are without wind or solar energy generation. On any given day, families and businesses cannot be sure that the power won't go off. We've got elderly people in my home state of South Australia who leave their air conditioners off on hot days because they're fearful that they won't be able to pay their energy bills when they come in. We've got businesses installing generators because they fear of outages or power spikes. That costs them anything up to $13,000 per megawatt hour. The Labor Weatherill government's solution to this is a great big battery that can store enough energy to sustain South Australia's peak demand for a whopping 2½ minutes. It's really quite ironic that the battery is located in Jamestown because Jamestown was without power last weekend for four hours due to a blackout.

In addition to this, we have a bank of dirty diesel generators consuming diesel. It's interesting that nobody seems to see the irony that South Australia has paid hundreds of millions of dollars buying carbon-spewing diesel generators to fix the faults of a renewable energy policy. It seems quite extraordinary. I wonder if it's ever been considered what the impact on the cost of diesel is likely to be when 80,000 litres of diesel is consumed per hour by these diesel generators. What do you think that's likely to do to the price of diesel? And who in the community is likely to suffer the most from this? Our transport operators and our agricultural industry. We seem to conveniently forget that much of South Australia's economy is generated in our rural and regional areas. Unfortunately, the policies of this sad, tired Weatherill government are really biting in the country. Take, for example, my home area in the Riverland, on the River Murray in South Australia. We're a region that's entirely reliant on irrigation.

Senator Farrell interjecting—

This is a region, Senator Farrell, that grows most of the fruit and vegetables that you and your family enjoy eating for dinner most nights of the week. Another irony for many irrigators is that taking up the government's call to improve water efficiency to help restore the Murray to long-term sustainable health has now made them much more dependent on electricity to drive their pressurised irrigation systems. I will quote for you some statistics that came from discussions with the Central Irrigation Trust. This is a trust that supplies water to a large part of the Riverland, all the way from Myponga in the Adelaide Hills to Renmark, where I live. Their electricity costs now account for 37 per cent of their total expenditure. Their prices have doubled in the last eight years. It's yet another sad experiment that has now cost South Australia.

We all know the statistics of the renewable energy policy of the South Australian Labor government and the impact and consequences it has had on South Australia. A 50 per cent renewable energy target without any process to transition, with baseload power cut off, has been an absolute disaster. Sadly, it's not just the Labor Party that is keen to pursue vanity policies on renewables. In fact, it was Peter Humphries, the deposed Nick Xenophon Team candidate, who described South Australia's renewable energy policy as 'a vanity policy', but Mr Humphries's commonsense position on energy didn't fit in with the Xenophon team's policy; hence he is no more. South Australia is left with not only the Labor Party's policy but also the Nick Xenophon Team's policy as quoted by the Xenophon team's member for Mayo, Ms Sharkie, who rejected her colleague, saying:

Well, I wouldn't call it vanity politics. Myself and my team, Nick, Skye, and Stirling—

I'm assuming that's Nick Xenophon, Skye Kakoschke-Moore and Stirling Griff—

we agree with a 50 per cent renewable energy target.

That means that not only will we have a 50 per cent renewable energy experiment under the Labor Party but, if Nick Xenophon gets his hands on any power in South Australia, it will be continued.

The good news is that the state Liberal team have a plan to deal with the high cost and unreliable power fiasco that has been inflicted on South Australia by Jay Weatherill. The even better news is that Steven Marshall and his shadow energy minister, Dan van Holst Pellekaan, stand ready to work with the federal government to resolve the problem. Instead of the blatant and reckless refusal by the Labor Party to accept that South Australia even has a problem, and more importantly a preparedness to fix it, Steven Marshall and his team are ready to stand up and deal with this problem. Both the federal government and the state Liberal team are focused on keeping the lights on in South Australia and reducing household bills and businesses' energy costs.

In summary, the federal government has put together a suite of measures to assist all Australians with the energy crisis that is before us, and many of these will play out very well in South Australia. The federal government has put their energy policy on the table. In conjunction with the energy cost reduction initiatives of the federal government, Steven Marshall has announced that, if he is elected, his government will implement policies to further reduce household power prices, and they will do so without wasting taxpayers' money on the establishment and operation of government owned permanent standalone gas generators; the South Australian Liberals will instead support the construction of an interconnector with New South Wales to provide South Australia with access to affordable and reliable baseload power. At the same time, we will also provide South Australians with the opportunity to export our excess renewable energy. In addition to that, we are also going to provide a $180 million fund to support home based storage, other initiatives in storage, demand management and grid integration. On 17 March, South Australians have a choice. They can have more expensive and unreliable power at the hands of a Labor government, a Xenophon government or a Labor-Xenophon government, or they can choose a Marshall Liberal government that is ready, willing and able to address this all-important issue.

I thank Senator Bernardi for creating the opportunity for this debate. I look forward to him working with the South Australian Liberal government, should we be lucky enough to be elected by the South Australian public on 17 March, to provide the energy solutions that our home state of South Australia so desperately needs.