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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-09-23 Daily Xml
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Motions

State Electricity Network

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (11:30): By leave, on behalf of the member for Morphett I move:

That this house—

(a) recognises that 28 September 2020 marks four years since the statewide blackout in which almost all of South Australia lost power;

(b) acknowledges the failure of the former Labor government to secure the state’s electricity network, resulting in the loss of power to over 850,000 customers, including to hospitals; and

(c) highlights the commitment by the state Liberal government to build a new high-capacity interconnector, connecting South Australia and the National Electricity Market.

The previous government's rush to renewables without sufficient planning not only saw wholesale electricity prices soar in South Australia but also left our grid vulnerable. The huge, unmanaged growth in household and large-scale solar and wind power under Labor, combined with its disorderly closure of the Northern Power Station, meant our grid was left without sufficient base load power, making it extremely susceptible to shocks.

The irony did not escape those on the West Coast: the very day that the stack was brought down at Port Augusta, the power went out in Streaky Bay. The two incidents were not related, but the irony did not escape people. At that point, Streaky Bay was suffering regular power outages. I will come back to that because we all know that the Far West Coast is on the end of the grid and there are other things to take into account there.

At the time, the government had failed to make sure that South Australia had sufficient base load generation to keep prices down and the lights on. South Australians experienced the worst possible consequence of this mismanagement when the state was plunged into a blackout on 28 September 2016. It was a significant storm that caused a number of towers to come down in the Mid and Upper North of South Australia, which had a knock-on effect and effectively took out the state's power supply for a period of time. The blackout lasted for a number of hours in some areas and for several days in other regions, including on Eyre Peninsula.

For those of us who were sitting in parliament at the time, we all remember when the power went out and we had to adjourn our proceedings in this very chamber, for no other reason than Hansard were unable to make effective recordings of the day's proceedings. The lights were out. We had emergency generators, of course, but without Hansard there was no parliament. I do remember stepping out onto North Terrace at about 6pm in September and sensing a rather eerie feeling on that particular day when the entire city was blacked-out and people were attempting to make their way home in the evening without streetlights or traffic lights. Fortunately, we managed to do that but it was really quite eerie and a change from the normal situation.

As far as the West Coast and Port Lincoln go, Port Lincoln finished up being out of power for three days; that is my recollection. Areas inland on Eyre Peninsula were out for four days and I believe some areas went up to five days without power. The saga in Port Lincoln was exacerbated because we had in place three emergency generators, and I note the member for West Torrens is nodding. He is fully aware of this and we discussed it at the time.

Unfortunately, those generators failed to start. They failed to do what they were employed to do, and that is kick in to provide emergency power generation for the City of Port Lincoln. Had they functioned as they were supposed to, as they were contracted to, Port Lincoln would have hardly noticed that the power was out. I am honestly not sure what the result of that situation was. I assume that today those generators would be in a workable state. We do not know that. I am assuming that. We assumed it last time. As I said, had those generators worked, Port Lincoln would have hardly noticed.

Three days in I sensed the beginnings of panic amongst some of the population of Port Lincoln. There were line-ups, many hundreds of metres long at fuel outlets, with people wanting to fill up their car. Of course, that was difficult to do without electricity. There was no cash available; ATMs were out. It even got to the point where the water supply to the city was under some pressure because the electric pumps were not able to work and people were stockpiling water.

Most significantly, what happens in these extended power outages is that communications disappear. The mobile phone towers go out and the battery backup for the mobile phone towers goes out. Phone communications become unavailable and internet communication becomes unavailable and, of course, we all know how important internet and phone are these days.

Another thing that strikes home is how critical electricity is to our modern life. At the risk of giving my age away, I am old enough to remember as a boy in the far west of the state that we were connected to the state grid. For the first time in my parents' life and my grandparents' life, we had a mains power supply in the late 1960s. Life has changed significantly since then but we have come to a point where we absolutely cannot function as a modern society without electricity.

Business SA at that time claimed that the statewide blackout cost businesses $367 million over the period of one, two or three days. This government's intention is to make our energy supply more reliable, more affordable and cleaner. We are delivering an interconnector with New South Wales to access cheaper base load power to allow us to export our abundant renewable energy and develop renewable energy zones along the route—a significant piece of investment in infrastructure.

We will also be rolling out the largest per capita Home Battery Scheme in the world with $100 million worth of subsidies for households to purchase home storage systems. In its own quiet way that helps to protect the grid itself. We will deliver our $50 million Grid Scale Storage Fund which will accelerate the rollout of grid-scale energy storage infrastructure and address the intermittency of South Australia's electricity supplies. We will also deliver $30 million for demand management trials that can show how new and distributed technologies can make the grid more efficient and reward customers for managing their own demand. This is a significant shift in the way our electricity grid is managed.

The interconnector to New South Wales, known as Project EnergyConnect, has been deemed critical and a No Regrets project by the Australian Energy Market Operator to address the legacy of blackouts. Project EnergyConnect will stabilise the grid, helping to support the continued take-up of household solar by South Australians, particularly rooftop solar. Home rooftop solar, but also on sheds and small businesses, has seen a significant take-up in South Australia, and it has been a good thing, but it needs to be managed so that it does not cause problems with the larger grid. It will also create jobs and unlock further investment in renewable energy projects along the route of the interconnector.

The recent announcement from the ACT government to invest in the first stage of Neoen's $3 billion Goyder project near Burra is an example of the type of investment this interconnector will secure for South Australia. There are many projects waiting in the wings for the interconnector to go ahead. The interconnector with New South Wales will supplement the two existing interconnectors running from South Australia into Victoria, the major interconnector being the Heywood interconnector running from the South-East of South Australia into Victoria and vice versa, and the other one being in the Murraylands, also into Victoria.

Significantly, the interconnector with New South Wales will become a crucial project, and it will deliver cheaper energy for South Australians, possibly an average saving of $66 per household and much more for small businesses. I have pleasure in moving this motion. It is significant, it is important, and the interconnector itself is a big part of securing our energy security into the future.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (11:41): Governments during crises have important work to do. This government have found the time, energy and effort to move a motion to talk about an event that occurred in 2016. Why? Is it because they are concerned about what happened in 2016, or is it simply base political motives? I suspect it is pettiness from a government bereft of their own ideas, bereft of their agenda.

Without COVID, they have no real reason to exist. They have no agenda, no economic agenda. They have no health agenda, no education agenda. Their entire process of this term has been to continue the work of the former Labor government and attempt to claim it as their own. But they have some of their own ideas.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Chaffey!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I sat silently, sir, while I listened to the dulcet tones of the member for Flinders talk about someone else's motion. I did so politely because he is a gentleman of the parliament. This motion is a stunt, but I will address some of the matters raised by the member for Flinders. He is absolutely right about one thing: the generators that were contracted to support Port Lincoln failed. Let's think about that. Private contractors were tasked with the service to provide an essential service to the people of the member for Flinders' electorate, and they failed. The consequence was, according to the member for Flinders, panic, anxiety and discord.

How did we get to this point, where an essential service like electricity is in the hands of boardrooms in foreign nations? We had an electricity supply that was reliable and cheap. Members opposite say that the Northern power station was such a critical piece of infrastructure as to maintain the backbone and spine of our energy security. They was so enamoured by it that they sold it—they sold it.

After they sold it to private interests, who relied on a brown coalmine to operate Northern, through their love of the Northern power station and the Playford units they sold it to a foreign company. Of course, after it was sold initially it was sold again and again through iterations of bankruptcy and administration, because they could not make it work because it is an essential service.

Of course, when you privatise a system like ETSA and you leave a coal-fired generator and a gas-fired generator to compete each other against each other in a market like South Australia, the obvious occurs. The then Treasurer knew the outcome would be that Northern power station would be unable to peak its energy supply. People deliberately did not contract with Northern because they knew that Northern had to operate regardless of its manufacturer of electricity being a coal-fired base load generator, so they simply got a free ride on the back of it, hoping that Northern would always be there without actually buying power from them.

The South Australian government at the time realised this—that is, the then Labor government—and I as Treasurer made sure we bought all our power from the Northern power station to try to maintain a level of support for that power station. Of course, BHP did not. They did not contract with Northern. They were offered a long-term contract of $60 per megawatt hour for 10 years for the life of their coal reserves, and BHP made a decision not to. Why? They calculated that Northern would continue to operate, lowering prices, and therefore operate at a loss and, therefore, they could buy on the spot market cheaper.

That was a stupid decision and South Australian companies in the wholesale market pre COVID were buying electricity at extraordinary prices, that is, expensive prices. Northern was set up to fail by the privatisation of ETSA, pure and simple. When it collapsed, every time I heard a member of the opposition or Liberal Party complain about it, it made me wonder if it was so important to them, why did they sell it and allow it to be in the hands of foreign owners or private equity? Why, if it was such an important, essential asset?

Let's then go to the transmission and distribution lines, a cost that the taxpayer had already paid for and built. I will divide that into two aspects: let's maintain Eyre Peninsula and Upper Spencer Gulf, people who are relying on swell lines for their power. Let's talk about the quality of power people on Eyre Peninsula are getting from their distribution and transmission lines. How many times have people on Eyre Peninsula written to members talking about the quality of the power they receive, the damage it does to their compressors and their refrigerators, and the damage it does to industrial uses on Eyre Peninsula and in regional South Australia because the quality of power is so poor?

Do you know why? There are 860,000 people or thereabouts connected to the NEM in South Australia, and we are one of the largest landmasses in the world to have a long, skinny grid with some of the lowest numbers of customers. That is why you do not sell it to a private company. That is why you keep it in public ownership—because the only way you can make money to support such infrastructure as a regulated monopoly is to charge extraordinary amounts of returns on that investment by a private monopoly.

What has happened in return? SA Power Networks, in buying our distribution network, has made more money out of this one investment than all of its other investments. South Australia is the most profitable place that its Hong Kong-Chinese owners have invested in. What does that tell you about that deal? What does that tell you about that privatisation? Let's then go to the transmission lines, again paid for by South Australians, sold again for a pittance to a regulated monopoly again making massive returns. At one stage, they were owned by the Queensland government; they knew what they were doing.

I have heard members opposite lecturing us about electricity. Yes, the statewide blackout did occur. Statewide blackouts occur on average about every 50 years. Unfortunately, South Australia had its in 2016 and its impacts on reputation were damaging. The government responded with an energy plan that overwhelmingly transformed the reliability of the electricity market in South Australia. Since the implementation of that energy plan in 2016, we have seen the grid stabilise.

But the government has another plan now to build another interconnector to New South Wales. The AER has warned Australia about this interconnector. It says, 'If you build this interconnector, the costs as contemplated are at their maximum range allowable for it to be a regulated asset.' hat is, if it costs any more, you have to find money from somewhere else. The cost-benefit analysis does not stack up.

But we were promised that this would be operational before the next election. Now we are being told it will be operational after the next election. My instincts are, from what I have seen, that they are short: they do not have the money, costs have blown out and the government is using taxpayers money to try to invest in an asset they will not own.

This is not like investing in a road or a building or a hospital or a school or infrastructure that is No Regrets. This is investing in an interconnector that will be owned by foreign interests, using taxpayers' money. If the experts are right and this interconnector is built, it will see the closure of most of South Australia's thermal generation. The minister argues that is not true, that the reports are wrong. The minister argues that will not occur, cannot occur. I think he is wrong because I believe the experts, not him.

He is also banking on an investment rush of renewable energy if we build the interconnector. That defeats the purpose of renewable energy. We want renewable energy to be oversupplied so we can use cheap power here for our industrial means, not to meet the requirements of New South Wales and other states. We want that spilled energy here to make hydrogen, here to be stored in batteries, here to be used to pump hydro, here to be used in heavy industries, not exported to New South Wales. That is why we want an oversupply of renewable energy. This is a stunt, and the member for Flinders is far too dignified to have himself cloaked in such an appalling, petty stunt orchestrated by the minister.

Ms LUETHEN (King) (11:51): In March 2018, the Marshall Liberal government was elected to office to represent the best interests of people in South Australia. We were elected on our platform to create more jobs, to lower the costs of living and to deliver better services, and that is exactly what we are delivering, especially when it comes to energy policies. We are fixing the shambolic mess, instability and accelerating energy prices that we inherited from the former government. We are delivering practical outcomes to lower the costs of living with power bills for South Australians and to provide a better service and more secure network.

We should take a moment to recognise that 28 September 2020 will mark for us four years since the statewide blackout in which almost all of South Australia lost power. This was certainly a very dark day in our state's history. The previous Labor government's rush to renewables without sufficient planning not only saw wholesale electricity prices soar in SA but also left our grid vulnerable, and the huge unmanaged growth in household and large scale solar and wind power under Labor, combined with its disorderly closure of the Northern power station, meant our grid was left without sufficient base load power, making it extremely susceptible to shocks.

Labor failed to make sure South Australia had sufficient base load generation to keep prices down and keep the lights on. South Australians experienced the worst possible consequence of this mismanagement when the state was plunged into a blackout on 28 September 2020. The blackout lasted from a number of hours in some areas to several days in other regions, including Eyre Peninsula. Business SA claimed the statewide blackout cost our businesses in South Australia $367 million.

It is important to acknowledge the failure of the former Labor government to secure the state's electricity network, resulting in the loss of power to over 850,000 customers, including hospitals. However, unlike the Labor Party, our Marshall Liberal government has a plan to make our energy supply more reliable, affordable and clean. Cost-of-living pressures, including power prices, were a major concern raised with me by my local residents in King. It continues to be a major concern, with lots of questions coming through, and that is why I am advocating for every measure possible that will lower the cost of living in South Australia.

To address cost of living in terms of power price reduction, ESCOSA recently released its annual update of energy retail prices, showing that the average South Australian residential market offer for electricity was reduced by $96 in 2019-20. This was on top of an average $62 fall in household electricity bills during 2018-19. Therefore, this has resulted in a delivery of $158 in savings during the last two years under the Marshall Liberal government.

This $158 in savings that our Marshall Liberal government has delivered in our first two years in office is a stark contrast to the $477 increase by the Labor Party in its final two years in office. On top of this, with the interconnector, this will result in an additional $66 saving for households and much more for small businesses. Our Home Battery Scheme is also reducing power costs for both the households that install the subsidised batteries and the rest of South Australian consumers. We are on track to deliver on our promise to cut electricity bills by $302 during our first term in office.

We have also delivered many other cost-of-living reductions including saving an average $200 a year on the cost of water, $160 on ESL bills, with more to come, and $100 per vehicle in reduced car registration costs through lower CTP insurance premiums. I know this means a lot in my electorate, because many people have more than two cars in their driveways. We have also abolished payroll tax for small businesses and delivered land tax reforms and savings. We came to government promising real cost-of-living relief for South Australian households and that is precisely what we are delivering.

In terms of delivering a better service and a more secure network, we are delivering an interconnector with New South Wales to access cheaper base load power, which will allow us to export our abundant renewable energy and develop renewable energy zones along its route; rolling out the largest per capita Home Battery Scheme in the world, with $100 million in subsidies for households to purchase home storage systems; delivering our $50 million Grid Scale Storage Fund, which will accelerate the rollout of grid-scale energy storage infrastructure and address the intermittency of South Australia's electricity supplies; and delivering $30 million for demand management trials that can show how new and distributed technologies can help make the grid more efficient and reward consumers for managing their own demand.

The state Liberal government is committed to building a new high-capacity interconnector, connecting South Australia and the National Electricity Market. The interconnector, or Project EnergyConnect, has been deemed critical and a No Regrets project by the Australian Energy Market Operator to address Labor's legacy of blackouts. The interconnector will stabilise the grid and this in turn will help to support the continued take-up of household solar by South Australians.

The interconnector will also create jobs and unlock further investment in renewable energy projects along its route. The recent announcement from the ACT government to invest in the first stage of Neoen's $3 billion Goyder project near Burra is an example of the type of investment the interconnector will secure for SA. There are many projects waiting in the wings for the interconnector to go ahead. This crucial project will also deliver cheaper energy for South Australians, with an average $66 saving for households and much for small businesses.

So far, the Labor Party members are the only people who are not supporting the interconnector. The minister asked for their support in this house only yesterday and urged them to get on board as lower costs and stability are what South Australians are asking for. I urge those opposite to stop standing in the way of cheaper, cleaner and reliable electricity for South Australians.

Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity today to speak to this motion, to compare and contrast how we are securing a stable state electricity network and to remember, regrettably, how the opposition drove up the cost of living for South Australians. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss what the Marshall Liberal government has done, and continues to do, to provide better services to secure a stable electricity network and what we are doing to reduce the cost of living for South Australians. We are not there yet, but we are working very hard every day, and I thank the Minister for Energy and Mining for the work he is doing and his leadership in this space.

Just before, the member for West Torrens said today, 'How did we get to this point of a statewide blackout?' I hope my speech today has shed some light on that. I thank the Minister for Trade for raising this motion and encourage all members of this house to support it.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (12:00): I thank the member for King for her well-researched and well-presented contribution. I also rise to support the motion—initially from the member for Morphett, now the Minister for Trade and Investment—moved very well today by the member for Flinders.

I am in strong support of this motion and reject almost all that the former Labor government minister, now shadow energy spokesperson, said. Those opposite would have us believe that when ETSA was sold—I think it was about 22 years ago now—it meant that the statewide blackout was inevitable and unavoidable. That is not the case.

Another thing that was said in the contribution of the member opposite was that statewide blackouts happen on average once every 50 years. I do not know how many commentators we all heard talk about that statewide blackout four years ago as the first one ever in South Australia. We do know that South Australia has been around a lot longer than 50 years, a lot longer than 100 years, longer than 150 years, so that average is not right either.

Those opposite would have us believe that this statewide blackout was inevitable and that it was just their terribly bad luck to be in government at the time it came along. What a ridiculous argument. The statewide blackout was a tragedy for our state.

I work my guts out every day, as do people in my office and as do people in the department, as do people in industry, to do everything we possibly can to make sure it never happens again. Can we guarantee that? No, there are no guarantees. Have we achieved it so far? Yes, we have. In 2½ years of government we have seen no forced load shedding to electricity customers in South Australia—in stark contrast to the very regular occurrence of forced load shedding under the previous government.

In our 2½ years of government we have seen electricity prices come down, as has just been explained by the member for King. Independently assessed by ESCOSA, in just the last two years there has been a $158 decrease in the cost of electricity available to South Australian households—in stark contrast to the $477 increase those same households suffered while also suffering through blackouts in the last two years of the previous government.

We are doing everything we possibly can to make things better. Our whole government is focused on reducing the cost of living and that burden to South Australia, and my work—not exclusively, but largely—is in the energy space. We are making things better.

The member opposite, the Labor opposition's energy spokesperson, talked about the Northern power station closing. The Northern power station was always going to close at some time in these years, and that had been known for 10 or 15 years ahead. The coal was starting to run out; it had not run out, but the quality was reducing up at the mine at Leigh Creek. The power station had an enormous amount of maintenance done to it, but not everything that would be needed to see it operate for another 10 or 20 years.

We also know that we are moving into a transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Gas is going to be with us for a long time to come; less and less gas in electricity generation over time, but it will be with us for a long time and we will be glad to have it. However, we are certainly moving away from coal, and I think that most people are pleased that we have moved away from coal. But what a lot of people do not know is that Alinta, the operator of the Northern power station, offered that if the former Labor government could contribute $24 million towards the cost of operating that plant over three years they would keep it running and it would support South Australia.

Those opposite turned that offer down so the power station closed sooner than it needed to. It did need to close but it did not need to close when it did. If it had operated for one or two or three years longer we would have been in a much better place in South Australia to have a well-planned, well-managed transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy.

As it was, South Australians were pushed over the cliff by the previous Labor government just for the former Premier's populist, and no doubt he believed deeply himself, personal desire to get as much renewable energy in South Australia as possible. Renewable energy is fantastic, everybody wants it, myself included, but renewable energy is only valuable when it is available.

The current Premier, then Leader of the Opposition, and I said to the former government for years, 'Sure, get more wind farms and get more solar farms, but there's a point beyond which you cannot go until you do two things: you start to get the energy mix right and you have a significant amount of grid-scale storage to help you through the vagaries of weather.'

Do not worry about what I or the then Leader of the Opposition and now Premier said; the former Labor government paid for, with taxpayers' money, independent external advice asking about whether they should increase their renewable energy target back at the time. I am now going back I think to 2009, when the government paid for two independent consultancies to get advice on whether they should increase their then renewable energy target from 25 per cent to 33 per cent.

Guess what, Mr Speaker? Both those consultancies said, 'Don't do it. You will lose system strength. You will put the grid at risk. You will put prices up. Do not do it.' Guess what they did? They did it anyway. After being at 33 per cent renewable energy penetration target, they went to a 50 per cent target and then, at the last election, they had moved on to a 75 per cent renewable energy target for South Australia without a word until their last stage in office. After they were woken up by the statewide blackout, then they started to talk about storage, then they started to talk about having backup supplies.

This was not something that was just coming in: it was terribly bad luck that the Labor Party was in government at the time, as those opposite would have us believe, based on the shadow minister's contribution—it was just going to come 20 years after ETSA regardless; it was just going to come every 50 years regardless. What rubbish, what absolute rubbish.

We have to get the mix right. We need to have a smart combination of wind and of sun, both large-scale solar and small-scale solar and large-scale storage and small-scale storage. We have about 270,000 homes in South Australia with solar on them now. We are heading towards tens of thousands of homes with small-scale batteries, household batteries. We have four grid-scale batteries operating in South Australia now. These are the things that allow us to have more renewable energy generated.

We are working hand in hand with industries, with academic institutions and with key stakeholders, and they all agree that interconnection is another key component of what South Australia needs—every one, except the South Australian Labor Party. Even Labor governments interstate support this but not here in South Australia, unfortunately, and it is time—they should just get out of the way.

If they cannot bring themselves to believe the expert advice coming from all corners, from gas-fired generators all the way through to Greenpeace at the other end of the spectrum, if they just cannot find it in their hearts to agree with what people are saying and what experts are saying, at least they should just drop their opposition. It was their opposition and what they did when they were in government that meant that South Australian households and businesses, from the smallest one-person household all the way through to the largest employers, which are some of the largest electricity consumers, were all punished by the previous Labor government's energy policies. They were punished with ever-increasing prices and more and more frequent blackouts, including the unprecedented statewide blackout.

The actions of those opposite have put South Australia in a precarious position. We remain in a very precarious position. We remain in a terribly challenging situation with great risks to our grid, but we are working through it sensibly, and we are bringing consumers and suppliers with us in a sensible way.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (12:10): I rise to speak to this motion that was introduced by the member for Flinders:

That this house—

(a) recognises that 28 September 2020 marks four years since the statewide blackout in which almost all of South Australia lost power;

(b) acknowledges the failure of the former Labor government to secure the state’s electricity network, resulting in the loss of power to over 850,000 customers, including to hospitals, and

(c) highlights the commitment by the state Liberal government to build a new high-capacity interconnector, connecting South Australia and the National Electricity Market.

It is interesting because we were here on that day in September 2016 when the lights literally went out on South Australia. Forever after that, we were the butt of jokes not just interstate but internationally: a whole state lost power. The reason we lost power was the former Labor government's headlong rush into renewables without making sure the necessary interim power supply, the transition power between coal and renewables, was in place. We already know that gas supplies a lot of power in this state. A lot of gas comes from the Cooper Basin and some of it obviously comes from the South-East and interstate. It is a great source of power, and gas is a fantastic transition fuel.

I note what the minister said about Alinta's deal in regard to the $24 million. If that had been put up by the previous government, it would have kept Port Augusta going for three years. What you have to understand is coal-fired power was up against heavily subsidised renewables. This is one of the main reasons that it could not compete. What happened with that sudden closure of Port Augusta, alongside the coalmine at Leigh Creek, was that around 650 jobs disappeared virtually overnight. A lot of those workers who lost their jobs would have been union members. These are the unions that support the labour movement. I would have loved to have heard the conversations in the smoko rooms when this decision was made.

As I have said in the past in this house on this issue, my father-in-law, Richard Abernethy, used to work at the Port Augusta power station. It was a disgrace to see this headlong rush, based on pure ideology, into renewables and starve the state of a stable base load power source. I do love going up north regularly. I try to do at least one trip a year, and I see Leigh Creek most of those years. Sadly, it is a shadow of its former self. Leigh Creek is a town that had to be moved because of the expansion of the coalmine decades ago, yet we see that that coalmine still would have had probably enough coal for at least 10 years to supply Port Augusta with more interim, transition fuel. Base load power gas stations could have been implemented for the future transition to renewables.

This is where we get to the interconnectors in this state. We already have Murraylink, which heads up through the Riverland, and the Heywood interconnector, which interconnects with Victoria with hundreds of megawatts of interconnection capacity. This is absolutely vital so that we can trade what is essentially a lot of our renewable power, whether that be solar or wind, to go to Victoria. That connects up through Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, and we can bring back other generation, including coal, as it is still part of the vital mix to keep Australia fired up.

We have seen what has happened in recent times and with policy changes. South Australians have been smart: they have looked to the future and installed solar panels on their houses, whether they are doing it to feel good about being green or they are doing it for their wallet. It might be a bit of both. I have 14.1 kilowatts of solar panels on both of my houses, generating power at home and at the farm. I could only have five kilowatts of power on a single wire return generation because that was the maximum limit.

Into the future, we need this interconnector with New South Wales. The Australian Energy Regulator rates it as a No Regrets policy. It is a No Regrets policy to build this interconnector into New South Wales because it will stabilise the grid. We have had a lot of rooftop solar put in on properties—whether on commercial warehouses or private homes—and a lot of commercial solar farms are rising up throughout our electorates. I have had a couple of big ones up around $100 million and I have another big one, which is likely to be put together very shortly, for several hundreds of millions of dollars.

We need to balance that input. That is why there was a recent policy change on new solar installations on homes. They may—and I stress 'may'—have to be switched off for very limited amounts of time when there is too much solar power going into the grid. This is for the simple reason that we need to have stability in the grid. I commend the Minister for Energy (member for Stuart) because we are putting stability in the grid, which is what Labor did not do and subsequently caused the blackout four years ago.

It was disgraceful; we had one incident and the power dropped out for the whole state. Back in the day, from what I understand, it was set up in five segments so that you would not lose the whole state. We did not have that base load power generating in the background so that did not happen, and as soon as there was a slight hiccup everything fell over. Adelaide was gridlocked. You could not get across the mile of the city in under an hour because obviously the lights were out. It was like a scene from Apocalypse Now or something. If people did not have backup generators, it was black. It was black not just across the City of Adelaide—and we were here because we were sitting—but across the state.

Apart from costing nearly than $400 million—that is one figure—to business in this state, it put lives at risk, it cost embryos when there was a generator failure at one of our hospitals and it caused a lot of distress. I note that in the member for Flinders' electorate it took days and days to get power restored in that area.

What we are doing is delivering this interconnector to New South Wales, rolling out the largest per capita Home Battery Scheme, delivering $50 million of grid-scale storage and delivering $30 million for demand management. The interconnector, Project EnergyConnect, is that vital link so that we can deliver on the expert way in which we deliver power from this side of the house.

As the minister said, the lights have not gone out under a managed situation ever since we have been in government, whereas all that the Labor government delivered was darkness to this state, and I say that not just in regard to power. I commend the motion.

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (12:20): I would like to thank all those who have spoken here today on this motion initially brought to this place by the member for Morphett. The member for West Torrens, of course, gave a potted version of the state's history, and the member for King also spoke as well as the Minister for Energy and Minerals. Interestingly, that portfolio has changed its name slightly: it was mining and energy; it is now energy and minerals, which just highlights the importance that this government puts on energy security and energy supply in this state.

The member for Hammond also gave a perspective, which highlighted the importance of the interconnector to New South Wales, and the security and opportunity that will bring to this state. There is no doubt that everybody in this place and throughout the state remembers that significant day on 28 September 2016 when the lights went out in the whole state.

We all remember the storms that brought the towers crashing down, but we should not have ever been in such a vulnerable situation as to have the resultant outage throughout the entire state. I thank those who spoke to the motion, and I commend the motion.

The SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to. The ayes have it.

Motion carried.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: I would like to call a division.

The SPEAKER: The member for Ramsay is a bit late. I have put the question. The question has been determined.

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