Power Prices

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:24): My question is to the Premier. Has the Premier broken his promise to reduce costs for South Australians? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: The pre-2022 state election Hydrogen Jobs Plan policy document claimed that Labor will ensure the hydrogen power plant will reduce wholesale electricity prices by 8 per cent. Instead, the average South Australian family is paying 43 per cent more on their annual power bill.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier, Minister for Defence and Space Industries) (14:25): Again, I think the best approach to the Leader of the Opposition's question is to look at objective data, look at independent research. These are not figures developed by a government agency or a political office but let's look at what Bank SA has said only this morning in their State Monitor survey, which looks at consumer confidence in South Australia, what they have found. Bank SA says that consumer confidence in South Australia, consumers, that is to say people at the front end of our economy who everyday have to confront the challenge of weighing up costs and household expenses amongst everything else, has surged with the latest Bank SA State Monitor survey reporting an increase of almost 7 per cent to 113.2 per cent, the highest result we have seen in consumer confidence in South Australia over the course of the last four years.

That is to say that notwithstanding the cost-of-living challenge, which most people understand represents a challenge beyond the immediate control of state government, but for the things that are within our control, what we have been able to deliver is the highest level of consumer confidence we have seen in South Australia over the course of the last four years.

Now, why does that matter? It is higher than the 100 per cent benchmark that Bank SA use as a benchmark statistic of where confidence is at, and confidence matters because when consumers are confident they go into hospitality businesses throughout the state, retail businesses throughout the state, service providers throughout the state and transact. When they transact, they put more income, more revenue into the pockets of those businesses which in turn allows them to invest in the state economy and allows them to employ people in South Australia, which is why we have an economy that is ostensibly at full employment, an economy that has more people employed in South Australia than at any other point in the history of the state, an economy that increasingly is the envy of the nation.

Increasingly, we are seeing people from other parts of the nation looking to South Australia and not saying, 'What's going wrong down there?' but rather asking, 'What are they doing to get themselves in a position where housing growth is the fastest rate in the country, consumer confidence is high, where we see economic growth performing exceedingly well?' They are asking themselves, 'How can we replicate the policy settings we see being applied in the state of South Australia in our jurisdictions?' They are seeking to copy us, not us copy them.

At the heart of this is a government that is united and disciplined, with the capacity to be able to apply a degree of policy consistency on major economic questions rather than permanent internal warfare, where you are arguing with the feds on ideas such as net zero, while we are able to turn to our federal government and say, 'Let's work collaboratively on opportunities for the future.'

When you weigh all that up, what we as a government acknowledge is that where there are cost-of-living challenges we have a budget in surplus which allows us to deploy policies to make a difference to those who need it most. Whether it be people on low and fixed incomes, people raising families looking to services in government schools and the like, we are able to disproportionately look after them with a budget in surplus, and for everybody else who looks to the private sector, we have an economy that is going strong with record levels of confidence so that people can continue to be employed.

The SPEAKER: The member for Morphett and the member for Chaffey, you are on that final warning list now.