Power Supply

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (16:51): I was interested today to read the headline of one of the original Labor hardheads, Graham Richardson, in The Australian this morning, under the heading 'Lemming-like Labor invites an electoral massacre'. He talks, in disparaging terms, about Labor as a brand in terms of the problems the nation and South Australia in particular face with reliability and affordability of power supply. Of course, he is a great Liberal Party hater, but he is expressing, in this particular article, his amazement at the arrogance and ignorance of the federal Labor Party, in particular about the critical issue of power and power supply. He says:

Government is achievable and it would indeed be a travesty if dumb ideological adherence to a renewables policy doomed to fail brought Labor undone.

He is trenchantly critical of the Labor Party's approach to the critical issues of affordability and reliability of power supply and their blind adherence, as he puts it, to the 50 per cent renewables target in such a very short time frame. We have seen that same arrogance and ignorance in South Australia in relation to the critical issues of affordability and reliability of power supply in the state arena. We have seen it from Premier Weatherill, Treasurer Koutsantonis and ministers in this chamber as well.

There was an unedifying interview from the viewpoint of Treasurer Koutsantonis with 5AA recently, as 5AA commentators David Penberthy and Will Goodings said that their Facebook page and telephones literally went into meltdown as a result of expressed anger at the arrogance and attitude of Treasurer Koutsantonis, Premier Weatherill and the government in relation to the critical issues of reliability and affordability of power supply.

David Penberthy is very well connected to the right of the Labor Party. He is, of course, married to the federal member for Adelaide, Kate Ellis, and has very strong connections with the right faction of the Labor Party through that particular connection. He has said, and this is him interviewing Treasurer Koutsantonis:

There are people in your party…who think you went too hard, too fast down the renewables path.

I think that was a telling commentary from David Penberthy, who, as I said, has very strong connections with senior powerbrokers within the right within Labor Party, and he is telling it as it is, that there are people within the Labor Party in South Australia who are strongly critical of the attitude of the state Labor Party. He goes on to say:

You're a right-winger…you're in the conservative tradition of the ALP. The number one test for a Labor Government should be how do you look after the interests of blue collar people and you're letting them down with punishingly high bills and an unreliable power supply. Why don't you muscle up and say all this renewable stuff, we've gone too far too soon and…we need to stop, pause and rethink?

Again, a trenchantly critical statement from David Penberthy to the Treasurer, who continues to have a tin ear and not listen to the criticisms being reflected through that particular program.

We have seen it in this chamber as well from minister Hunter, who has substituted substance in his replies to questions by an increasingly shrill shriek that he utilises during question time, thinking that shrill shrieking is a substitute for substance in terms of trying to respond to any questions which relate to the government's renewables policy and its impact on reliability and affordability of power in South Australia. We have seen increasingly desperate and untrue claims made by minister Hunter, which he knows to be untrue. He again repeated this week a claim that the Liberal government stopped the Riverlink interconnector, when he knows that was untrue. In fact, his government promised in 2002 to built the interconnector and 15 years later still has not done it.

Today, he again made an untrue claim that I had personally committed the Liberal Party in government not to privatise ETSA. I challenge him to find any such statement made by me as the minister for education during that particular period leading up to the 1997 election. He made some unsavoury claims, to which I will refer in a later debate, about the Hon. Mr Terry Cameron and myself. These are the increasingly shrill claims that he has made. Without being held up or asked to apologise, he called the Hon. Mr Brokenshire a liar in question time today. These are the desperate tactics being used at the moment by the government.