Whyalla Steelworks

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:19): I rise today to talk about the steelworks in Whyalla and, hopefully, I will also touch upon some of the comments that have been made in this chamber about the power contracts between the Coober Pedy council and EDL. Before starting, I was interested in the comments the member for Morphett made about the privatisation of electricity in Victoria and in the ACT. He mentioned that in order to point out that both those jurisdictions have lower electricity prices and that, just like South Australia, they had their systems privatised.

What he failed to mention, especially in relation to the ACT, given the attack on renewables in this state, is that the ACT also have a renewable energy target, but it is a target that is far more ambitious than the one that operates here in South Australia. In fact, the ACT have brought forward their target. They are aiming at 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020, and they are well on the way to achieving that particular target. They have done it through a series of reverse auctions, which have benefited a number of states with their projects as a result of the policy pursued in the ACT.

The other funny thing about the comparison between the privatised jurisdictions is that it does not compare apples with apples or oranges with oranges. The nature of the generating assets and the distribution assets in the various privatised states actually differs. There is a really, really salient point about the differences between these two states and one territory: that is, both Victoria and the ACT have relatively large populations in a very small landmass. Electricity prices in South Australia could be cheaper if we were not at the end of the National Electricity Market. The other element is that our distribution network covers a vast area. It is the fact that it covers that vast area with a very small population that generates some of the vulnerabilities that our electricity system has in South Australia.

I am a regular visitor to the member for Flinders' part of the world. I used to go fishing there before I was elected to this place. Over the years, I have fished at Streaky Bay, Locks Well, Elliston and a whole range of places on West Coast. The member for Flinders knows that over the years you get a lightning storm and other weather events on Eyre Peninsula, and those communities are often cut off, and often cut off for an extended period of time.

In fact, one of the answers to the issue about the dependability of power on Eyre Peninsula would be a commitment to the Green Grid proposal that was put up when Mike Rann was in government. It would have meant a strengthening of the transmission assets on Eyre Peninsula and, if we did have another in contractor, the capacity to utilise that massive globally significant wind resource on Eyre Peninsula. The Green Grid study identified that there are 10,000 megawatts on Eyre Peninsula but that you could readily exploit 2,000 megawatts of that fantastic resource.

Another great strength of Eyre Peninsula is that it is cheek by jowl with places like Whyalla in the north of the state, which also has a globally significant renewable energy resource largely in the form of solar. We know that solar complements wind to a degree. If we just had that missing nexus storage—which is coming—this state will put itself in a fantastic position: it will be low cost electricity and very dependable electricity.