Australian Energy Forum

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:35): As a vast majority of South Australians know, this state is at the forefront of delivering a renewable energy future. Through our state energy plan, we are delivering an energy future where our state will stand on its own two feet. We are going to be less reliant upon a broken energy market, and less reliant upon coal-fired power stations in the Eastern States. We are leading the way in the use of renewable energy and grid-scale storage solutions.

This is clearly not good news for everybody, particularly those people and those interests in the coal industry across Australia and the world who do not want us to succeed with renewable energy and grid-scale storage and fast-start gas technology. They want to maintain their profits around the country and the world, and they want to maintain their interest in dirty coal-fired power stations.

Recently, in South Australia we have seen these interests flare up to invest money in campaigns—significant funds being invested by the coal industry—in an 'astroturf' group called the Australian Energy Forum, which has been aggressively advertising on social media over the past six months. This campaign contains no authorisation and no explanation of who is funding the campaign. The Australian Energy Forum is a fiction. There is no office, there is no web page, there is no address and there is no phone number. However, all its posts attack renewable energy, attack grid-scale storage and even attack gas-fired generation in many of its posts.

It is no surprise that most believe that the coal industry is behind this campaign because coal is the only type of energy that this campaign does not attack. These ads are being promoted very heavily through social media, and lots of people I have spoken to have seen them countless times over the past six months. The campaign also attacks South Australia, not just the government but the whole state of South Australia. It also has ads going into Victoria, attacking the Victorian government as well over its desire now to embrace renewable energy.

Given the knowledge of social media charges and how often these ads are occurring, I would expect that hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent by the coal industry on this misleading campaign. The good news is that most South Australians who are being bombarded with these ads are seeing through the lies and deception pretty easily. If you look at the comments from actual South Australians on the page, many note that they believe that this is a coal industry front.

Many believe that the Liberal privatisation of ETSA has caused our power system to be up to the private market's whims, and many South Australians are saying on this page that they know the truth about the closure of Alinta being a decision of the private market. However, of course, some people unfortunately will not know the truth and will believe the lies that have been peddled on this page, which was of course their tactic all along.

This is a pretty tactic that has been taken right from the playbook of the Big Tobacco industry and their campaign over the past 30 years to oppose sensible health measures to stop people smoking. I have had some personal experience in terms of dealing with Big Tobacco's campaigns in the past. When I was working for the federal health minister on progressing plain packaging legislation, we saw Big Tobacco funnel its funding into a number of retailer alliance 'astroturf' campaigns.

Big Tobacco obviously knew that it could not go out and advertise the fact that they were worried that bringing in plain packaging would lead to less smoking, so they paid their money into 'astroturf' campaigns to pretend that the real issue was concern about retailers and convenience store staff having to spend more time finding cigarette packets. That is what they pretended the big campaign was. They were very quiet about the fact that all the money from the campaign, the millions of dollars that were being spent, was coming from Big Tobacco itself.

These campaigns were deceiving the public. They contained lies. They were not up-front about the true funders and motives, and they were designed to help the Liberal Party win government to stop the reforms. This is all exactly the same as is now happening here with the coal industry. Likewise, we see the coal industry becoming the new Big Tobacco, knowing that it cannot go out to advertise itself to say that it wants to keep burning more coal and cause dangerous climate change. They are using a front to pretend that they are a good-hearted organisation, a good-hearted forum, concerned about consumers.

I am very concerned about this Australian Energy Forum campaign, its motives, its tactics and whether it is breaching the Electoral Act in South Australia, something I will be writing to the Electoral Commissioner about to ask that it be investigated because we should all be worried about the democracy of South Australia.