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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-03-08 Daily Xml
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Deputy Premier, Overseas Trip

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:09): My question is to the Deputy Premier: did taxpayers pay for the Deputy Premier to stay in the most expensive hotel in Norway?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order. Standing order 97: the question involves argument, sir.

The SPEAKER: It may well do. As well, it might be so expansive as to be difficult to answer and therefore transgress on some commentary in Erskine May in relation to hypothetical questions. It would require the minister in answering to know an enormous amount about a range of facilities. I am not sure that it is necessarily possible to answer in its present form.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! However, I will give the member for Colton the opportunity to recast the question.

Mr COWDREY: Thank you, sir. Does the Deputy Premier give consideration to cost factors when selecting hotels on overseas trips? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr COWDREY: The Deputy Premier has not released her credit card statement from her $44,000 taxpayer-funded trip to Europe in September last year; however, recent proactive disclosure credit card records from her department show that her travelling companions stayed at Hotel Continental in Norway during their trip. According to their own website, this is a five-star luxury hotel in Oslo, and it is also one of the most expensive hotels in the country.

The SPEAKER: I think that the tail to that series of facts is argumentative; however, I am going to turn to the Deputy Premier.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (14:11): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank you for your earlier guidance. The trip to Norway, which was part of a larger trip that encompassed a number of subject areas, was specifically to talk about ways in which we can learn from Norway's approach to developing green industry. Norway has, I guess unashamedly in some ways, made a lot of money out of hydrocarbons over a long time, but has at least chosen to put that money into a sovereign wealth fund, and to invest that in a way that prepares them better for the future.

Now, their electricity generation internally in Norway is extremely high in renewables, but they have the great advantage at present of being able to use hydro to generate electricity, whereas we of course don't have that in South Australia, and they were very interested in our capability in intermittent renewables. However, having experienced drought in the last year, they are also very, very aware of the challenges of relying on good rainfall to fill up their reservoirs. They have, therefore, an interest in the kind of wind technology that we have been adopting here, and whether they will also adopt more of that, and they also have one of the biggest hydrolyser companies in the world.

For all those reasons, while otherwise also in Europe for a variety of other issues including defence and space, I visited Norway to have meetings with the relevant minister, with her agency, and with the company, and in the course of organising that I assume that the people who did the bookings followed the normal protocols that are established. I have no means of knowing the comparative prices of hotels on that particular night in Norway. I accept that it is expensive to travel in Europe, and to travel in any way at this stage, but it was a brief visit and was one that I found particularly useful.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Before I call the member for Colton I remind members that there is some guidance in Erskine May, the current edition, at paragraph 22.22 in relation to questions that are inadmissible, which may seek a solution to hypothetical propositions; raise questions of policy too large to be dealt with in any answer to a question; seek information on matters of past history for the purposes of argument; or are trivial, vague or meaningless. Member for Colton.

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