Power Outages

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:15): My question is to the Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy. Is the rationing of electricity by load shedding an acceptable outcome for South Australian families and South Australian businesses?

Ms Sanderson interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Adelaide is warned.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy) (14:16): Mr Speaker, I wonder if the Leader of the Opposition would ask the same question of the Hon. Josh Frydenberg, because this is a national rule, and I have to say, if it is a criticism of me—

Mr Marshall: That is bizarre.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Again, the Leader of the Opposition says things which are inaccurate. Load shedding is a policy across the country and, of course, we have seen occurrences in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales where load shedding has occurred. If the Leader of the Opposition is advocating a policy that we don't load shed and we don't put the system back into balance, is he then saying that every single time there is a disruption at a generator—

The SPEAKER: Point of order.

Mr PENGILLY: Sir, I ask you to rule on whether the Treasurer is debating the matter.

The SPEAKER: Well, at least the member for Finniss does come to the point of order with clean hands.

Mr Pengilly: At this stage.

The SPEAKER: Yes, quite. I will listen carefully to see that the Treasurer does not debate the question.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: If it were not for load shedding, the advice that I have seen would mean that we couldn't put the system back into balance, which is what every major jurisdiction uses. AEMO uses load shedding throughout the country to balance systems. If we didn't do it, you would see system blacks more regularly. If that is now the policy of the Liberal Party, they should actually say so, because an event in Victoria caused the shutdown of the interconnector which took—

Mr Marshall interjecting:

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

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Did you hear how he faded out at the end? He just fades out at the end. He did that in 2014: he just fades out at the end. What happened last night was there was an event in Victoria and AusNet, the Victorian owners of their grid, don't know exactly what occurred. The Victorian smelter was also taken out. We are not sure if there was some physical disruption or some imbalance within the Victorian system. That system was then attempting to infect the South Australian system. The operator then immediately shut off the interconnector.

Because the interconnector was closed off, the system needed to be in balance because we were 200 megawatts short, because we were taking 200 megawatts across the interconnector. Thankfully, we had 880 megawatts of thermal base load generation from South Australia in the system, of a 1,400 megawatt demand. We had 100 megawatts or so of wind power, which was very useful at the time as well. What the market operator was able to do was balance the system through load shedding.

Load shedding is not ideal, but the alternative is horrific. What the Leader of the Opposition doesn't understand in his question is that the alternative to load shedding is that we have a system black. If the other solution is that I build more base load generation, in a privatised market that members opposite created, and the government goes into direct competition with privately owned generators, they will retaliate.

How will they retaliate? Very simply. Unless we build enough thermal generation that is government owned to take care of all the state's needs, there will be rolling blackouts across South Australia every single day. That is what they do not understand opposite, because they do not understand the system that they have created.

All roads lead back to one problem: we don't control our generators, we don't control our transmission lines, we don't control the poles and wires that we built with our money. They have ceded our sovereignty to foreign owners and now they complain when they use monopoly practices against us. Quite frankly, they should apologise.

The SPEAKER: I won't accept the point of order from the member for Morialta, whatever it is, because he was interjecting in the most offensive manner immediately before rising to take a point of order. The leader.