Climate Change

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:24): My question is to the Minister for Climate Change. How does South Australia compare when it comes to tackling climate change and reducing emissions?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:24): I thank the honourable member for his most important question—

The Hon. S.G. Wade: One of the highest recycling rates of questions in the world!

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Oh, well done. The Hon. Mr Wade notes that South Australia has the highest recycling rate in the country.

The Hon. S.G. Wade: For questions.

The PRESIDENT: Will the honourable minister just take a seat. The Hon. Mr Hanson, if you would like to ask Mr Wade the question he might be able to answer it for us.

The Hon. S.G. Wade: It's clearly a recycled question.

The PRESIDENT: Minister.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Before I embark on an answer for the Hon. Mr Hanson, perhaps I can just give the Hon. Mr Stephens an answer about Belair. The last prescribed burn conducted in Belair National Park was in autumn of 2016, which treated an area of 14 hectares. During the last five years, the total area treated by prescribed burning in Belair was 94 hectares, which equates to 11 per cent of the total area of the reserve. During the last 10 years, the total area treated in Belair was 179 hectares, which equates to 21 per cent of the reserve. The next prescribed burn scheduled for Belair National Park is in the spring of 2017 to treat an area of 11 hectares, and another two prescribed burns are scheduled for autumn 2018.

DEWNR provides information about its annual prescribed burning program and its website, including details of upcoming burns at www.environmentsa.gov.au/managingnatural resources/firemanagement/upcomingprescribedburns. Also, a complete fire history, which includes both bushfires and prescribed burns, zoning and other spatial information is available at a similar website www.environmentsa.gov.au/naturalresources/firemanagement/bushfireriskandrecovery/firemanagement/maps.

What an excellent question from the honourable member. Last Friday, I jointly hosted a forum as part of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge: From Innovation to Commercialisation with Her Excellency, Erica Schouten, from the Netherlands. The solar challenge started 30 years ago, and the Dutch team has consistently been one of the teams that we need to beat. I think they have won seven of these challenges now. For South Australia, though, three decades have seen an awful lot of changes.

We have cut carbon emissions by over 8 per cent on 1990 levels whilst our economy has grown over 60 per cent and, as shown in the recent report from the Climate Council's Renewables Ready: States Leading the Charge, released in August, shows that South Australia leads the nation in renewable technologies. Our state is no longer powered by coal directly—an ambition that is shared by the Dutch government on having announced plans to close all their coal-fired power plants by 2030. You can compare that announcement to what happened in Australia this week.

Instead of embracing clean energy through clean energy targets, which the federal government commissioned a report from the Chief Scientist on, the federal Liberal government has opted for a coal energy target instead. We know that the Liberal Party in this state have outsourced their energy policy to the federal Liberals. I note this week that the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Dunstan, has already zealously signed up to the Prime Minister's—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: He is very zealous.

The Hon. R.I. Lucas: He's jealous.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Well, you might think he's jealous of the Prime Minister. The Hon. Mr Lucas says Steven Marshall is jealous of the federal Liberals, but he is fired up and backed in behind the Prime Minister's energy policy with absolutely no understanding of what it means, because there has been no modelling done, no evidence has been provided to the states that it will actually do what it has claimed to do, in fact people are saying that it won't even deliver any change in terms of cost of electricity to people and, if it does, it may only be 50¢.

The Hon. R.I. Lucas interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Exactly right. The Hon. Mr Lucas says, 'Show us your modelling.' That's what he should have said to the Prime Minister before his leader signed up to the plan. 'Show us your modelling.' The Hon. Mr Lucas is now lamenting the fact that Steven Marshall, the member for Dunstan, the Leader of the Opposition, has signed up to this federal Liberal plan without asking for the modelling to be shown to them.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Unbelievable.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: It is quite amazing. It is quite amazing—but there you go. The Liberals in this state have outsourced all responsibility for energy policy to the member for Sturt and the Prime Minister in Canberra. That shows you their level of ambition for South Australia, doesn't it? 'We are going to sell out to the commonwealth. Whatever the commonwealth says, we will go along with,' and they don't even have to prove to us that it works. That's what the member for Dunstan, Mr Stephen Marshall, the Leader of the Opposition, has signed up to in his article—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Now the Hon. David Ridgway says, 'Show us your modelling.' Well, why didn't he ask that of the Prime Minister? Why didn't he ask that of the Prime Minister? Happily, happily going along, this conga line of suckholes that we have from the Liberal Party, saying, 'Federal government, whatever you want mate we will sign up to it. Don't bother proving to us your claims. Don't show us your modelling; we don't care about it. We'll just do whatever you like,' and that's what we have from the Liberals in this state. The Liberals want to take us back to 1836. We know that the future of this state lies with renewables, the people of South Australia know that the future lies with renewables, even the majority of Liberal Party voters knows that the future lies with renewables.

The future of our energy system relies on renewables. This is the course that states and territories have been charting, including the Liberal-led government in New South Wales. The Liberal-led government in New South Wales has not been so quick to line up with the federal government's proposition but Steven Marshall, member for Dunstan and Leader of the Opposition in this state, just gets in line and says, 'Yep, right. We're with you guys. Don't bother telling us how it's going to work, we just trust you.' Not even the Liberal government of New South Wales has done that.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: The Climate Council's report—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Where's your modelling?

The PRESIDENT: The minister will take a seat for a minute. The Hon. Mr Ridgway, I don't want to hear you interject again. Let the minister finish his answer so that we can get onto the next question. Minister.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: The Climate Council's report highlights that this government's leadership and decisive action is paying off. Other states and territories are looking to South Australia's successes and moving into and adapting to a low carbon economy. The other states are following suit.

The report shows that South Australia has the highest capacity for renewable energy, excluding large hydro, of 1,625 megawatts, the highest capacity of new renewable energy per person, excluding large hydro. The report also shows that South Australians are embracing renewable energy at an incredible rate, with 30.5 per cent of South Australian households having rooftop solar PV, the second highest proportion after Queensland, which has come racing up. As I said, other states are catching up fast, and Queensland has now pipped us at the post to take out the highest level, but we are only just behind them.

Notably, two postcodes—5171 and 5157—have 50 per cent or more capacity from rooftop solar PV, based on residential uptake for suburbs with more than 1,000 dwellings. These postcodes cover the suburbs of Blewitt Springs, McLaren Flat, McLaren Vale, Pedler Creek, Tatachilla, Ashbourne, Bull Creek, Cherry Gardens, Clarendon, Coromandel East, Dorset Vale and Kangarilla.

The government is also backing what South Australians are backing, and that is a renewable future. Our $550 million energy plan not only takes back charge of our energy future, it also takes back charge of our energy future for South Australians, and it backs in behind renewable energy. We are building the world's largest lithium iron battery storage facility, the world's largest here in South Australia. We are investing $150 million in a renewable technology fund and building a solar thermal plant at Port Augusta. Our approach is delivering results.

My last advice is that we are close to achieving the government's target of $10 billion in renewable energy investment. We set ourselves a target for 2025 and we will get there. This is important, because this is a sector that doesn't just deliver reliable and environmentally sound energy to our communities, it also delivers jobs in our cities and in our towns. More importantly, it can help underpin rural economies, because renewable energy is important not just to address issues of climate change but also to employ people to attend to these renewable energy projects.

As honourable members will probably be aware, if we are to meet our Paris commitments, commitments that the Turnbull government has signed Australia up to, then we are going to have to reduce emissions in our electricity sector—although according to the federal government's plan now, they are going to shift the requirements to reduce emissions away from the electricity sector into other sectors. They are not saying which sectors. Is it the agricultural sector that is going to have to do the heavy lifting? Is it the transport sector that is going to have to do the heavy lifting? They will not say, but they are shifting responsibility away from a sector that already has the technological ability to do this heavy lifting to other sectors of the economy. They are not going to tell them who is going to bear that burden. The Liberal government in Canberra are saying, 'We're not going to make this easy for people, we're not going to make this easy for Australia, we're not going to make the energy sector'—

The PRESIDENT: Please wind up. There are a couple of other people who want questions.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: —'that has the technological abilities to do this very simply and cheaply. We are going to shift that off to another segment of the economy, and we're not telling people who that is going to be.' That's what the Liberal government is doing. That's despite the fact that the electricity sector is the biggest source of emissions in the country.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Let the minister finish this in silence.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: It accounts for one-third of the nation's emissions. The electricity sector is also important in helping to reduce emissions in the transport sector—another 16 per cent of national emissions. Indeed, instead of looking to decarbonise to provide the certainty that businesses want and have been calling out for—the action on climate change that they want—the federal government's activity is to move away from renewable technologies and back in behind coal.

As a state, we have an incredibly strong plan for the future that will ensure that South Australia remains a leader in renewable energy and achieves our goal of zero net emissions by 2050. The Liberals, on the other hand, have a plan to outsource all responsibility for energy to the federal government, and the federal government's new plan is: let's back in coal.