Power Prices

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:09): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier stand by his election promise to reduce South Australian power prices by 8 per cent? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: At the 2022 state election, Labor promised South Australians that its Hydrogen Jobs Plan would lower wholesale electricity prices by 8 per cent and deliver thousands of jobs for South Australians. The average household bill has gone up by about $800.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:10): I remember the election campaign pretty clearly. I gave an address at the SACOME function. It was a function arranged by SACOME, where they hosted the former Premier at one point during the course of the campaign, then they had myself as the then Leader of the Opposition. I got asked about energy prices, and I gave an answer there that I have said repeatedly in other forums. I may even have referred to it in the Sky News Press Club debate, the Sky News debate that we had during the course of the election campaign.

I made it clear, specifically in the SACOME event, that we weren't formulating our Hydrogen Jobs Plan with the objective, and we weren't running around spruiking the Hydrogen Jobs Plan, telling people that it was a policy to reduce power prices, it was an industry policy, and we made that clear. Do you know what happened when I said that at the SACOME function? I think within a few hours SALibMedia—the member for Schubert might have been typing out the tweet for all I know, or someone else; it's okay—was tweeting that, 'Oh, Labor leader Peter Malinauskas says the Hydrogen Jobs Plan won't reduce power prices.' So all you need to do is go look at your own Twitter feed and you will see that I was very transparent about this.

The reason why we were adopting that position was because we had seen the failures made of other governments, and there is a string of them, admittedly on both sides of politics, but including the former government, which were saying, 'Oh, we are going to produce power prices by X dollars,' and you didn't.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Morphett!

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Morphett, I am calling out your name and you are still yelling. You are on your final warning.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: The simple fact is you didn't, and the facts bear that out. And if that were true, then maybe you would have performed a bit better at the election than would otherwise be the case, because power prices matter to people and it's important, and we have been transparent about what we are seeking to do in respect of power regime. We have already instituted the firm policy that has been legislated through the parliament, I think with bipartisan support from the opposition, which demonstrates that we are delivering policy outcomes that presumably they agree with.

More than that, in each and every budget, the Treasurer has been at pains to make sure that we are making a difference with respect to cost of living, and there have been very tangible commitments that we've made around trying to mitigate the impact of global energy prices soaring, post the Ukraine conflict, that are not just oriented towards households but also businesses. In direct response to the Leader of the Opposition's question, we were very transparent about our advocacy on these matters in the lead-up to the election, to the extent that even you were quoting it yourselves.