Electricity Prices

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (15:16): Thank you very much, sir. My question is to the Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy. Will the base futures electricity price in South Australia be, on average, higher than other states for the next three years?

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy) (15:16): Cue the mock outrage!

The SPEAKER: Any member holding up one in the next five seconds will be named.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Sir, as I look—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: And every member of the opposition receives a warning for that conduct—everyone.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is like the Moscow Olympics, sir.

The SPEAKER: Is there a member who did not hold up? Make a display.

Ms REDMOND: I didn't.

The SPEAKER: Did the member for Heysen not make a display?

Ms REDMOND: I did not make a display, sir.

The SPEAKER: Then accordingly you are not warned. Is there anyone else who did not make a display?

Ms CHAPMAN: Me.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader.

Ms CHAPMAN: There is not one here.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Mr Speaker, I am just wondering, if you add one to the accumulated—

The SPEAKER: Yes; yes, I know.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: —do we have anybody who is on three?

The SPEAKER: Yes, a very good point. Minister.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Like the Moscow Olympics, sir. All the little socialists putting up the cards at the right time, aren't you?

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: All good little socialists; do as you're told. That's right, yes.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Oh, Mr Speaker! It is a bit rich, as Sir Thomas Playford looks down on the party that sold what he built, on a day when ESCOSA, the independent regulator, took a government monopoly—a government utility: water—and has given South Australians, in an interim report, a 3 per cent decrease. Three years ago, a 6 per cent increase—$90 million a year—yet the assets that were privatised by members opposite—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: When they privatised these assets, they broke them up to ensure a nice little tidy sale price. What did they do? They didn't build new interconnections to insulate South Australians from volatile price increases. What did they do? They broke up the assets, they sold them to the private sector, and now they dare to come into this house and lecture us about high power prices. Compare the two, Mr Speaker.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Compare the two! SA Water, funding South Australians, lower water prices. Queensland has higher water prices than South Australia. Victoria has higher water prices than South Australia. The guilty party opposite are the ones who have caused this for South Australia, but we are attempting to do something about it. It is very difficult to—

The SPEAKER: Can I interrupt you for a moment. The member for Finniss continued to make the display. Accordingly, he will leave under the sessional orders for the next hour.

The honourable member for Finniss having withdrawn from the chamber:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is a very difficult thing to predict. The national electricity market, in my opinion, is not operating as it was intended to. We don't have sufficient interconnections to New South Wales, courtesy of the former Liberal government, which was selling our assets and breaking them up to maximise the sale price.

Ms Sanderson: Fourteen years; come on!

The SPEAKER: The member for Adelaide is warned for the second and final time.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: They did not build sufficient interconnections with other markets. We have lobbied, and lobbied very hard, with the national regulator to upgrade the Heywood interconnector—

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned for the second and final time.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —and that process is being upgraded from a capacity currently of 460 megawatts to 650 megawatts. We have been supporting this upgrade and that means we will get, again, more access to the Victorian energy market to bring in power. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) recently advised that the Heywood interconnector upgrade project was on track and would be completed in the middle of this year, with a new transformer in Heywood having been commissioned in late 2015.

No-one can accurately predict that, though our estimates may. We are working to do everything we can to keep power prices down. We have had rule changes in the national market, which means we have stopped the late bidding of prices into the market to stop this type of gaming in the electricity market. It occurs in a market like South Australia where there is not much interconnection.

Again, that interconnection wasn't built, to maximise the sale price that members opposite ensured they imposed on South Australians when they privatised ETSA. Again I say to the people of South Australia: compare the two. Compare our water assets, which are a government monopoly, owned by the people of the state: price reductions. Compare the privatised, broken up market of our electricity assets and see the difference.

Mr Bell: You don't have baseload power.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The question there is why? Why don't we have baseload power?

Mr Marshall: That's not the question.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is, because one of your backbenchers just asked it. The reason there is no baseload power is the way the assets were privatised. They broke up the generation, broke up transmission, broke up retail and sold them all individually. What does that mean? The generators are on their own; the generators are on their own with no interconnection. As that interconnection comes on line, what happens to those generators? They are priced out of the market.

I have to say that it is a bit rich of the Liberal Party to lecture us on power pricing, given that they are the guilty party which caused this for South Australians. They are the ones doing it. What do we do about it? How do we fix their mess? It's been a long and slow process to unscramble this egg—a long and slow process. But I will get another question, no doubt.

Mr Goldsworthy: He didn't answer the first one.

The SPEAKER: The member for Kavel is warned. The Leader.