Electricity Generation

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (14:37): My question is again to the Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, particularly in light of his previous answers about the AEMO. Does he stand by his statement made in this parliament on 29 September 2016? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

We are the lead legislator for the National Electricity Market. We have a lot of in-depth, in situ advice given to us constantly by world experts based here in South Australia—people whose lives have been dedicated to the management of the National Electricity Market and its establishment…We have designed it, we have built it...

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy) (14:38): Of course, the context is 'we' because every single piece of legislation—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: We are the lead jurisdiction, and when I say 'we' I mean members of the opposition, the government, the government of Victoria, the opposition of Victoria, the government of New South Wales, the opposition of New South Wales and the same in Queensland. This is a collective operation, and every single time we have moved legislation members opposite have voted for it. Not once have they opposed national reforms through the COAG process, yet here we are today and they are trying to say that they are not responsible in any way for the National Electricity Market.

The reason we have this NEM, the reason we have to have a collective operation of regulation, is that we don't own our assets anymore and we participate in a national market. Why is that? Why do we do that? What's the answer? Because they sold our assets, and then they have the audacity to complain about us being involved in national processes. We are compelled to be, but those national processes aren't working for us anymore; in fact, they have let us down terribly.

In fact, the operation of AEMO has let us down terribly. Ever since Matt Zema passed, we have seen AEMO make mistakes that are, quite frankly, inexcusable. We need to rectify that, and the way we are going to rectify it is through dramatic interventions in the National Electricity Market in the interests of South Australians, much like former premier Tom Playford did when he realised that the privately-run electricity operators weren't serving the interests of regional South Australians. That's what we are going to do as well. We have made a decision that the private operators of our electricity market do not serve the interests of the people of South Australia and we are going to intervene.