Power Prices

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:12): My question is to the Premier. What impact will the closure of the Office of Hydrogen have on the government's plan to lower power prices?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:12): I do not think the Leader of the Opposition has quite grasped the impact that power prices have and their correlation to gas prices. I think that link that he refuses to make—what I will do is I will explain it again one more time for the house to understand this. The person who applies the last megawatt of hour to firm the entire system sets the price in our National Electricity Market. So, if demand is 1,500 megawatts and wind is offering 1,400 megawatts but gas offers the final 100, they set the price for the entire 1,500 megawatts, because they are able to complete the system.

An honourable member: Who did shut down that power station?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The South Australian government has not shut down any gas-fired power station. The only people who have shut down a gas-fired power station are members opposite when they underwrote a power connection to New South Wales, whose sole regulatory investment test was about shutting down Torrens Island. All of you here sitting opposite are responsible for the closure of Torrens Island and you're trying to blame us for it. And fake laughs don't change anything. Fake laughing doesn't change anything. This is serious business.

The reason gas prices are expensive in this country is because there are governments in this country that seem to try to do everything they can to stop its extraction. Where is gas extraction stopped here in this state? In our second largest basin. Who did that? Members opposite. Why did they do that? To hold a seat. What happened to that seat? Well, they lost that seat because the member got charged with an offence. And like the Premier said over the weekend at the ALP state convention, there are more Liberals who are charged with offences than there are women in their party.

I have to say, if they don't understand the connection between gas and electricity pricing, God help us all. The truth is the only way we are going to lower power prices in this country is to have an orderly rollout of renewable energy, appropriate climate change policies and an availability of gas at affordable prices to firm that renewable energy until there is a breakthrough technology to store that energy.

Members opposite have ruled out two of those three solutions. There is no solution on climate change, because they don't believe in it, and the second part is they don't believe in gas extraction. So for us it's either coal or nothing. South Australia has no coal, so their solution is to only connect to New South Wales and Victoria—to what? To brown coal. Of course, their coal is old and being underwritten by the taxpayer because it can't survive in the commercial market.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Now they're yelling out, 'Uranium.' Now they want the most expensive option for South Australians. There is no coherent policy from members opposite. All they do is complain. If they were serious about electricity pricing in this country they would get up and apologise for the privatisation of ETSA.

Mr TEAGUE: Point of order—

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: They would say that they'd made a mistake.

The SPEAKER: Minister.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: They wouldn't underwrite policies that close—

The SPEAKER: Minister, there is a point of order.

Mr TEAGUE: Standing order 98(a). The question is what impact will the closure of the Office of Hydrogen Power have. The minister is not remotely close to answering the question. It is a rant masquerading as debate, but it is not responsive to the standing orders.

The SPEAKER: My recollection is he answered that part of the question in the first 20 seconds, and now he's just giving some commentary on the wider energy market in South Australia. But I'll continue to listen. The Minister for Energy.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I don't think members opposite like to hear the cold, hard truth about the energy transition. The cold, hard truth about the energy transition is that we are embarking on the biggest transition in human history. We are moving away from thermal based generation of electricity to renewable based generation of electricity, and South Australia is leading that. And there are impacts of this political division. Those impacts of political division cost money. We've got a shadow minister for net zero and a federal member of the same party saying, 'Net zero is rubbish,' yet you still have a member for net zero. They don't believe in climate change, bemoan the closure of coal-fired power and don't have a systematic policy for unlocking renewables, and thus you then get this partisanship which does not give us lower prices.