Electricity Prices

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (15:38): My question is to the Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy. Has the government investigated what the impact of South Australia's high electricity prices will be on job creation over the next three years?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy) (15:38): Yes, we have. In fact, it is a critical part of our Economic Development Cabinet Committee. We had a very detailed briefing from the agency to members of that committee just last week. I am very concerned about the lack of interconnection to other markets as a result of the privatisation of our assets in the 1990s. That interconnection in today's money is very expensive and, unfortunately for us, because we do not own our assets any more, we cannot use revenue generated from those assets to invest in that interconnection.

The only way we can do it is either offer a community service obligation to the regulator or to AEMO or to ElectraNet to then build that themselves—and we use taxpayers' money to do it and we have no asset to offset it—or what we will have to do, what has been foisted upon South Australians ever since members opposite privatised ETSA, is have higher power prices and higher user charges to upgrade the utilities through the infrastructure, that is, the poles and wires, the transmission lines, which has seen a lot of our infrastructure upgraded by taxpayers paying higher bills. South Australians are rightly angry about this because they have paid for ETSA in full. They owned it and it was sold out from underneath them, and we don't have that income earning asset any more to invest in this infrastructure, and that is a real shame.

I think the real contrast to that today is SA Water, a government-owned utility, that has not the highest priced water in the country even though we are in the driest state in the driest land. Even though our landmass is on a par with Queensland's and much larger than Victoria's, our population is smaller, yet we get water at postage stamp pricing. So, no matter where you live, how far away you are from the water source, you pay the same and, in the driest state in the driest country in the world, that government owned asset under independent regulation is not the highest priced utility in the country; in fact, it's mid-range—it's mid-range—and we have the second lowest sewerage prices in the country.

That's what government ownership can do. Government investment in government owned assets can do that. We don't have that with ETSA. We weren't investing every year in interconnection with New South Wales and Victoria. Why? Because they sold to the private sector, and all the private sector wanted to do was make a return. All they wanted to do was to make a return, but they didn't invest in the infrastructure that would lower their prices long-term. But if we had any of those assets, what would we be doing? We would be making sure that our small businesses and our manufacturers have access to lower power. That's why he built it, Mr Speaker, that's why he built it. That's why Tom Playford built ETSA: to give our manufacturers cheaper power. What did they do? They sold it, and now they are complaining about higher prices. Quite frankly, Mr Speaker—

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The rantings of a desperate, desperate man in a dying leadership—and the fake laugh's not working any more, because the polls are working, Mr Speaker; they're getting to him.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I think the Treasurer is finished. For the benefit of Hansard, the reference to 'he' was a reference to Sir Thomas Playford. It's very hard to render in Hansard the Treasurer pointing in a frenzied manner at the former premier's portrait on the wall. Member for Stuart.