HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-09-28 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Motions

State Electricity Network

Debate resumed.

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (11:18): I move to make the following amendments to the motion:

In paragraph (a) delete the words 'during a period when local power prices soared to amongst the highest in the world', and insert in lieu thereof 'when an extraordinary storm struck the state'.

Delete paragraph (b) and insert new paragraph (b) 'condemns the Marshall Liberal government for reducing the reliability of South Australia's power network by leasing the publicly owned generators to the private sector, abrogating its responsibility to encourage investment in, and efficient use of, generation capacity and failing to meet the Liberal Party election commitment of reducing average household power prices by $302 a year'.

Delete paragraph (c) and insert new paragraph (c) 'urges the Malinauskas Labor government to continue its good work to improve provision of reliable, affordable and cleaner energy to South Australians'.

Can I thank the member for Morphett for moving this motion, because it gives the house time to revisit the events of 2016 and the myths and misinformation that were created around that episode in the state's history. It also gives the house time to reflect on how those opposite sat on the government benches for four years and failed to act to meet their election promises and failed to ensure there was investment in an efficient use of energy generation in South Australia. Accordingly, I have moved amendments to the motion proposed by the member for Morphett.

My fellow members will have more to say about the events of 28 September 2016, but can I just highlight that the motion proposed by the member for Morphett is yet another disgraceful attempt by the Liberal Party to spread disinformation. Who can forget how it took a Labor Premier to stand next to the then federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, and call out the shameful attitude of the Liberal Party to South Australia over an event caused by an extraordinary storm? The Liberal Party blamed renewable energy when the storm tore down three power transmission lines, precipitating a series of events involving the transmission system, wind farms, the Victorian interconnector and fossil fuel powered generators.

In paragraph (b) of the member for Morphett's motion, it is claimed that under the Liberals the average household electricity bill reduced by $421 a year. During the 2018 election campaign, one of the key promises made by the Liberal Party was that average electricity prices would fall by $302 a year. That promise was repeated time and time again. Of course, we should recall that earlier media conference when the then Liberal leader, Steven Marshall, was embarrassed by having to admit that most of the projected production was already in train rather than through any action planned by the Liberals.

Let's look at what that promise actually was. In its document called 'Liberal energy solution', on page 9 the Liberals said, and I quote, 'an average South Australian household’s power bill fall by $302, compared to the latest (2016-17) prices'. What were the average prices in 2016-17? The benchmark is estimated every year for the state by the Essential Services Commission of SA, which surveys all available retail market offers. The commission's 2016-17 energy retail offers comparison report said that the average was $1,976 a year. What was the ESCOSA estimate for the last full financial year (2020-21) of the Liberal government? It was $1,941.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Morphett is called to order.

Ms HOOD: What was it in 2021-22, a financial year in which the Liberals were in government for roughly three-quarters of the time? It was $2,041. No matter how you look at it, the Liberal Party failed dismally in meeting its election promise. At absolute best, prices fell by $35, not even close to the promised $302. Then, prices were on an upward trend by the time the Liberals were defeated by the people of South Australia to an increase of $65. Of course, the Liberals have form when failing to meet election promises. Let's think: GlobeLink, a tram right-hand turn, no privatisation agenda. The list goes on and on.

Ms Stinson: School zones.

Ms HOOD: School zones. The member for Morphett is echoing claims made by the former Premier and former energy minister of a $421 fall in prices. Those claims are based on taking a different starting point from the one made in writing by the Liberal Party and an arbitrary end point, made under special instruction outside the ESCOSA annual reporting pattern. There is a term for behaviour like that, and it is called shifting the goalposts. It was not just one set of goalposts; the Liberals decided to move the goalposts at both ends of the ground. They must take the public for fools. Fortunately, the Australian Labor Party treats the public with respect. We do not shift the goalposts and we deliver on the promises we make.

Let us think about what actions the respective side of politics has taken to strengthen the electricity system. In the final years of the previous Labor government, measures included:

leading changes to requirements on synchronous generation;

investing in state-owned generators, which would fill the crucial capacity gap to meet extreme peak demand; and

underpinning investment in the big battery at Jamestown, which I was proud to attend the night it was switched on.

It is important to note on that last point that the former Liberal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, mocked our big battery, likening it to a big banana. That is the same former Liberal Prime Minister who, when he was Treasurer, carried a lump of coal into federal parliament and told us we should all be afraid. He would have been better carrying in a Dyson because that is a much more accurate description of the renewable energy policy on that side of the house—a vacuum!

With leadership like that, it is no surprise as to what the South Australian Liberal Party did when they were in government. They brought in new rules so household solar could be switched off remotely, denying households the ability to earn feed-in tariffs from exporting their solar energy, privatised our state-owned generators and broke their promise to reduce power prices by $302.

The big battery in Jamestown has saved consumers tens of millions of dollars in the reduced cost of system support services. Derided by those who never understood its purpose, the battery is now a model, copied around Australia and globally as an essential service for electricity grids. The two sets of generators bought by the previous Labor government likewise did what they were intended to do. For example, on 24 January 2019, when hot temperature records were broken in many regions of South Australia, the Australian Energy Market Operator ordered that the government-owned generators fire up.

Despite electricity demand peaking close to records as households cranked up their air conditioners, there were no blackouts in South Australia due to the lack of electricity supply. In fact, SA had excess generation and helped minimise load shedding, that is, localised rolling blackouts like Victoria. So what did the Liberal Party do? They sold off control of the generators to the private sector through long-term leases, losing that safety net in the system. Shame!

In the latest forecast by AEMO, South Australia faces a potential reliability gap in the summer of 2023-24, a gap that is almost exactly the size of the capacity of the generators, which are no longer under government control. In paragraph (c) of the motion, the member for Morphett claims that Labor opposed construction of the high-capacity interconnector to New South Wales. As so often is the case with the Liberal Party, the claim is hollow. Where are the quotes from the Premier or from the Minister for Energy and Mining where they said they oppose the interconnector? Such quotes do not exist because they were never said.

What was correctly pointed out was that Project EnergyConnect will result in thermal generators in South Australia closing down earlier than they would have without the interconnector. That risk—and it is a risk—was actually part of the business case in which the proponents advocated for the interconnector in its investment test with the Australian Energy Regulator. Now with the timetable for Project EnergyConnect slipping, according to AEMO, the potential reliability gaps have increased.

In contrast, rather than pinning our hopes on the aging coal-fired power stations in New South Wales, which are breaking down and likely to close down earlier than expected, the Malinauskas Labor government is strengthening our capacity here at home in South Australia. The $593 million Hydrogen Jobs Plan will firm up cheap renewable energy projects, and the CSIRO has reported that renewable energy is the cheapest form of new generation.

To make renewable energy projects even more attractive to investors, the government's hydrogen generation plant will enable proponents to offer firm contracts of clean green energy, with hydrogen filling in any gaps during still dark nights. That hydrogen will be manufactured from renewable energy at times when it is plentiful. This will restore value to solar generation. The Malinauskas Labor government wants South Australians to be in control of South Australia's future. We will not abrogate our responsibility: we will show leadership as we have in the past, and we will deliver reliable, affordable and cleaner green energy.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (11:28): I rise to support the motion as presented by the shadow minister, the member for Morphett, and to oppose the proposed amendments that have just now been circulated and spoken to by the member for Adelaide. I am glad that the member for Adelaide raises the issue of the generators, the so-called emergency diesel generators that were acquired in the dying days of the last Labor government, because it is true to say—and one might draw the connection—that the Labor government we saw through the 1980s and into the early 1990s finished with the collapse of the state's finances.

The previous Labor government—and there can be no doubting—finished with the collapse of confidence in the state's electricity supply. There are connections that can be drawn from one era to the other, but the collapse in confidence that resulted from those years of energy policy mismanagement by the previous Labor government cannot be seen to be repeated now that Labor finds itself back in power.

One of the important things about this debate is that over the course of the last generation, as South Australians moved from what was the Playford era base load generation model—where we were all used to reliable energy generation for an extended period of time, to the extent that the average South Australian would not have really turned their mind to electricity or even prices terribly much—we saw the introduction of the new era of renewable energy generation, something that South Australia is so naturally suited to and strong in.

As we see—and it is only one example but a key example, and I recommend it to everybody, Ross Garnaut's text on the matter—Super-Power offers the manual to confidence that South Australians ought to have in the energy space. The point to be made in all of this is that when it comes to electricity policy, management and delivery, it is management and good policy that are at the core of achieving success.

I am really not interested in dwelling on rhetoric surrounding why South Australians ended up with the extraordinary unreliability that they undoubtably did in the lead-up to 2018, nor am I interested in rhetoric around why they were paying so much more for electricity than they ought to have been as the result of that mismanagement.

What is clear is that residents in my local area in the Hills, and they were not alone—we experienced storms extended in 2016, the spring storms of 2016 through to the Christmas storms, which led to all sorts of difficulty—had come to the point where the smart money around the barbecue was identifying which generator you had been able to secure so that you could secure reliable power for your home, your toilets and, if you were running a small business, to keep your freezer running while the ever more unreliable energy grid was failing on an ever more frequent basis in this state.

We had come to a point by certainly late 2017, over the course of that year commencing with the infamous statewide blackout, where South Australians had moved to a mindset in which grid electricity was expensive and unreliable to the point where you needed to fend for yourself, particularly if you did not have mains water and particularly if you were trying to keep produce cool. We were left in a situation where the whole thing was vulnerable to politicisation in a way we had not seen for many generations prior. It was an extraordinary state of affairs that led to the situation we found ourselves in at the end of 2017.

Into this space came Labor, with rhetoric from the previous Minister for Energy that, 'Right, we are going to go it alone in South Australia. We are going to island ourselves from the rest of the grid so as to protect our interests, and we are going to spend a whole lot of money on so-called hybrid electricity generation,' essentially diesel generators. You can just picture the convoy of tankers rolling through to fuel these things.

That rhetoric was somehow going to tell South Australians that if they stuck with Weatherill Labor and the then energy minister (who finds himself back in the role), they were going to have island South Australia, they were going to have these diesel generators and they were going to move even further away from a rational approach to energy. That is against the background of not just the statewide blackout on 28 September 2016 but continued and ever more unreliable and expensive power over the period that followed.

By the way, to this may I say that if one wants to talk about moving the goalposts look at the scoreboard. How many blackouts occurred in the lead-up to the March 2018 election, and how many blackouts occurred over the summers that followed under the good stewardship of the former minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan? The answer is none.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: Where is he? Didn't he get rewarded? Well, take your hat off and thank him. He's right here.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Heysen has the call.

Mr TEAGUE: As the Treasurer has observed at least recently, it is the case that Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan is no longer in this place. It is not for any failure—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr TEAGUE: —of record in this space. Zero blackouts, high reliability and reduced costs are his legacy. I pay tribute to him, as all members here should.

When we dwell on this matter just for a moment, because I am glad the member for Adelaide has raised the matter of these generators, the new government in 2018 considered the matter of what to do about these diesel generators and commissioned a thoroughgoing inquiry into them, the result of which was a damning finding that the cost of the acquisition of these generators—which had not been used by late 2018. They had not been used. As Daniel Wills, the then state political editor for The Advertiser newspaper, reported in October 2018—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr TEAGUE: —the power shock was that $610 million was to be spent based on dubious, if any, evidence of any efficacy. Not only that, but a straw man was set up by these folks opposite to somehow create this notion that the rational leasing out of these generators to the private sector, who could put them to use, was somehow privatising them contrary to interest.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Heysen has the call. The member for West Torrens is called to order. The Treasurer is called to order. The member for Chaffey is called to order.

Mr TEAGUE: All I will say at this point is: look at the scoreboard. Look at the record—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: Rhetorically and ideologically bankrupt.

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr TEAGUE: —of the former Marshall Liberal government in this space: costs were down, reliability was up and the good management of South Australia's strong renewable capacity was there for all to see.

So I do ask South Australians: keep up your interest in our state's greatest strengths in this space, keep up your interest in ensuring that South Australia is leading the way on renewable energy, keep up your holding of this government to account on completing the interconnector to New South Wales, notwithstanding whatever form of mealy-mouthed commitment or otherwise to it that we have heard.

Make sure it happens, folks, because we know that ensuring reliability and ensuring lower prices means having a rational approach to energy in this state. It does not mean playing politics, it does not mean islanding South Australia, it does not mean acquiring assets simply for the purposes of creating a political narrative. What it means is day-to-day good management.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Who wants to island South Australia?

The SPEAKER: Order, member for West Torrens!

Mr TEAGUE: I will be the first to join in supporting a rational approach, but I endorse very much the words of the motion in its original form and I commend that to the house.

Mr FULBROOK (Playford) (11:38): I thank the member for Morphett for raising this motion. It gives the house time to revisit the events of 2016 and the myths and misinformation that were created around that episode in the state's history.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

Mr FULBROOK: Member for Chaffey, I sat in silence while your side spoke. I think you could afford me the same courtesy.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Playford will not respond to interjections. The member for Chaffey is called to order.

Mr FULBROOK: It also gives the house time to reflect on how those to the right of me failed in their responsibility to strengthen the electricity system. With this in mind, I speak in support of the amendments to the motion.

Continuing our walk down memory lane, let us again revisit the night of 28 September 2016. In doing so, we must not rely on uninformed or malicious speculation from commentators who are scientifically illiterate and oppose renewable energy. Instead, let's focus on the official apolitical investigations conducted by public agencies. The first of these was by the Australian Energy Market Operator, the body that runs the grid in the National Electricity Market. This is what AEMO said happened, and I quote:

On Wednesday, 28 September 2016, tornadoes with wind speeds in the range of 190-260 km/h occurred in areas of South Australia. Two tornadoes almost simultaneously damaged a single circuit 275 kilovolt (kV) transmission line and a double circuit 275 kV transmission line, some 170 km apart.

The damage to these three transmission lines caused them to trip, and a sequence of faults in quick succession resulted in six voltage dips on the SA grid over a two-minute period at around 4.16 pm.

As the number of faults on the transmission network grew, nine wind farms in the mid-north of SA exhibited a sustained reduction in power as a protection feature activated. For eight of these wind farms, the protection settings of their wind turbines allowed them to withstand a pre-set number of voltage dips within a two-minute period. Activation of this protection feature resulted in a significant sustained power reduction for these wind farms. A sustained generation reduction of 456 megawatts (MW) occurred over a period of less than seven seconds.

The reduction in wind farm output caused a significant increase in imported power flowing through the Heywood Interconnector. Approximately 700 milliseconds (ms) after the reduction of output from the last of the wind farms, the flow on the Victoria-SA Heywood Interconnector reached such a level that it activated a special protection scheme that tripped the interconnector offline.

The SA power system then became separated…from the rest of the NEM. Without any substantial load shedding following the system separation, the remaining generation was much less than the connected load and unable to maintain the islanded system frequency. As a result, all supply to the SA region was lost at 4.18 pm…AEMO's analysis shows that following system separation, frequency collapse and the consequent Black System was inevitable.

So AEMO identified a cascade of events, an extraordinary storm striking the state in more than one place at the same time. The storm caused physical damage to three transmission lines. This led to the lines tripping off, which led to the voltage problems, which led to wind farms tripping off, and then the Heywood Interconnector to Victoria overloaded and tripped. The disturbance in the grid then led to the remaining generation, including gas-fired power stations in Adelaide, to trip off.

Clearly, there was no singular event but a series of events starting with the storm. Without the storm, there would have been no blackout. In all subsequent events, after the storm blew over the transmission towers, the equipment performed according to how it was set up. Whether it was a wind farm, an interconnector or a fossil fuel generator, the equipment tripped off to protect itself.

Having lived in the Northern Territory, I feel it is it important to consider the magnitude of this storm compared with the tropical cyclones experienced up north. This is how the Bureau of Meteorology described it, and I quote:

One of the most significant severe thunderstorm outbreaks in recent decades…Multiple supercell thunderstorms produced damaging to destructive wind gusts, including at least seven tornadoes, very large hailstones and locally intense rainfall.

The bureau goes on to talk about 'explosive' and 'extreme' conditions. This was not some regular South Australian thunderstorm; this was something very different—the sort of extreme weather that experts warn will be the consequence of climate change, even if they are wary of attributing an individual event to the change.

Of course, the Bureau of Meteorology did issue warnings about severe winds on that fateful day. In turn, AEMO was in discussions with South Australia's electricity transmission provider, ElectraNet, about the looming storm. ElectraNet had field crews on stand-by and rescheduled work to put as much of a buffer into the system as they could. AEMO said the following of their discussions:

No issues were raised by ElectraNet about abnormal risks to the transmission network. Across the National Electricity Market, the transmission system has had a history of successfully withstanding storms, with maximum gust wind speeds of 120 to 140 km/h without major incidents. The lack of any advice from ElectraNet of additional risks to its transmission network under these forecast conditions was not inconsistent with the historical performance of the grid.

But the storm was outside historical expectations, with wind gusts of up to 260 km/h. After the event, many commentators sought to blame renewable energy, specifically wind farms, for the blackout, even though they, like every other piece of equipment in the chain, performed as they were set up to do. I am not saying this to escape the fact that there was no issue on how they were set up and whether these settings had been properly ratified according to the rules.

The Australian Energy Regulator, the body which enforces the rules, took the view they were not and successfully argued the case in the Federal Court. The wind farm owners accepted this was a serious transgression and agreed to pay substantial fines. But what is of particular interest in the four Federal Court cases was a formal allegation by the Australian Energy Regulator that the wind farms were a contributing cause of the black system event and blackout throughout the South Australian region. In court, the regulator dropped the allegation. I say again: no storm, no blackout.

My colleague has outlined that the Liberal Party failed on many fronts in the electricity sector during their term in office. They failed to meet their election promise. They failed to ensure the prospects of increased generation capacity were fulfilled. They failed to retain in state government control the generation capacity that has and can make a crucial difference in keeping the lights on. The Liberal Party was all talk, but no real action.

In contrast, the Malinauskas government is getting on with the job of sorting out the mess and delivering reliable, affordable and cleaner energy to South Australians. I commend the actions of this government and the proposed revisions to this house.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (11:47): During the election campaign, someone decided to tape then opposition leader Peter Malinauskas, who is now the Premier, regarding remarks he made on power prices. He said very clearly that politicians in state parliament, politicians in federal parliament and politicians in general who get up and make bold claims about electricity prices are setting themselves up to fail.

A clear example of that is the previous Marshall Liberal government, which made a stupid and irresponsible promise they could never keep, which was to reduce power prices by $302 from the 2016-17 ESCOSA average. They set a benchmark to it. They could not meet it. They tried to meet different time lines to try to show that they could meet it. They even used their ministerial powers to instruct ESCOSA to come up with different ways of measuring annual electricity prices to try to escalate the amount of money that people had saved. It was a fool's paradise. It did not work, and no-one believed them because they saw the experience in their own bills.

Mr Teague: No-one believes you.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I note my learned friend, the energy expert, who is the shadow minister for child protection and attorney-general, having a view on electricity prices. Perhaps, the hard cold reality is that at no moment during the last four years of his government were power prices lower than they were under the previous Weatherill government.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: He shakes his head because he does not know.

Mr Teague: How many blackouts?

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Blackouts, not prices?

Mr Teague: Yes, prices, too.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Prices, too?

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Do you assert that prices were higher under the Weatherill government than they were under the Marshall government? Do you assert that?

The SPEAKER: Order! The exchange across the chamber will cease.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: No, you don't. Cowardly as always.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Politicians making promises about power prices is just silly. One of the reasons that I also want to point out to the house is that, after the 2016 state blackout, we released an energy plan, an energy plan that was comprehensive, to try to stabilise the grid. Why were we having to stabilise a grid that we did not own? Because it had been privatised, and the people who had privatised our grid were then trying to blame the people who were managing it for their lack of investment. Think of that.

At the time, the shadow treasurer and the Treasurer was the same person who sold these assets yet attempted to assign blame to another party. Then, when we were putting in backup diesel generation, it was to be converted to gas-fired generation. That was the subject of the Livesey report. The previous government then outsourced our generation, and to this day half our generation was not operational for the entire time of the previous government's time in office. It was lost to us, just lost to us.

Mr Teague interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Again, the member asserts they were never used—false. They were used. So another thing he has told parliament that is not accurate is that they were not used: they were used. Of course they were used. When it comes to energy policy, partisanship will poison this debate every single time. What has happened now is the Hornsdale Power Reserve—

Mr Teague interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Despite the right-wing opposition, who are trying to yell out obscenities against renewable energy, the truth is the Hornsdale Power Reserve is now the blueprint for every piece of investment around Australia and globally. We were mocked for grid-scale generation to be stored, mocked by members opposite. They mocked us. They cheered when the former Prime Minister said it was nothing more than a tourist attraction, like the Big Banana. Now, it is standard practice.

I pose this question to the house: of the 2017 energy plan that was designed to stabilise the system, what part did the incoming Marshall government repeal? What part did they repeal? None—not one. It was implemented in full—in full. But the member for Heysen, who only scraped in here at the last election after a Labor candidate who had campaigned for a maximum of 28 days pushed him to preferences, now is trying to tell us somehow that he is a genius on energy. Perhaps he should look to the log in his own eye before he criticises the speck in ours.

I have to say, this motion moved by the member for Morphett is purely partisan. All it attempts to do is self-congratulation, rather than actually reflect on why it is he is now the opposition spokesperson for energy rather than the Minister for Energy. It is motions like this of self-congratulation that do you no good—absolutely no good. Perhaps it would be better to review your energy policies and say, 'What went wrong?' But they cannot do that.

They are beyond self-reflection because, if you read this motion, the last four years were all honey and light. Everything was perfect. Power prices were the cheapest they had ever been—not true. Project EnergyConnect, the project that the previous government hung all their aspirations on, is all about connecting us to a jurisdiction that has on average higher wholesale power prices than we do. That is their claim to fame. It was going to cost less than $2 billion. It is now costing over $2 billion and, of course, it is delayed again.

I have a letter here sent to the Master Butchers Co-operative by then energy minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan. It was sent on 25 May 2021. It was a question by Mr Jamie Higgins, who was the chief executive officer. He was asking, 'I am on the gas spot market for our enterprise. We are a cooperative, and we want to make sure that we are doing the right thing by our members. Should we remain on the spot market, or should we hedge our gas contracts?' The response from the minister was that Project EnergyConnect would fix all of that. Why? Because Project EnergyConnect is designed to close all gas thermal generation in South Australia, which will create a surplus in gas in South Australia, which will mean there is more gas available.

Of course, Project EnergyConnect is delayed. The time frame for building EnergyConnect has been delayed, but the time frame for closing those gas-fired generators remains on schedule. So now we are facing a shortage of generation, and where we turn to our backup generation they are already in the market. We have no backup generation. We have none. The state has no reserve, which is why, yet again, we have to come to the election promising to build new generation, another 200 megawatts, this time on completely renewable energy, and of course that will be owned by the people of South Australia and operated in the interest of the people of South Australia. But the risk of course is that if we lose an election the members opposite will return to form and sell that as well.

Every time we build up our energy system, they sell it—Torrens Island, 1,200 megawatts, new generation. I remember when Northern closed, the screams of outrage by members opposite that Northern was closing. If it was so important to members opposite, why did they sell it? There is silence opposite. The man sitting behind us looks down at the members opposite with contempt—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —contempt! There is a reason you are a habitual one-term government—because the best and brightest do not join the state Liberal Party. Why would you? Look at who you are sitting next to. Why would you join this lot?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: They go to Canberra or they go to the private sector. These people could not run a Wokinabox, let alone the energy system.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I have to say, the faux outrage by—

Mr Teague: Faux outrage?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Faux outrage. You are not really angry. You can't be really angry.

Mr Teague: My electors had to buy generators because of that.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: You need a personality to be angry. You don't have any.

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Teague: My electors couldn't have their toilet because of you.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Oh, they couldn't have their toilet because of me.

Mr Teague: If you don't have mains water under Labor, you don't have a toilet that functions.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is just extraordinary. It is extraordinary, the way members opposite make their arguments in this parliament. It is extraordinary. It is unprofessional, and there is a reason—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —the members opposite are sitting in the opposition benches again, booted out again.

Mr Teague: Do not engage in personal abuse.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Well, you have been booted out again and you cannot—

The SPEAKER: Member for Heysen, if you wish to raise a point of order, raise it. Otherwise, I draw your attention to 141.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: All you do is sit here and interject in a disorderly way because you cannot make an argument because you do not know what it is you are talking about, and that is why you are sitting on the opposition benches again. That is where you will remain because you cannot make a cohesive argument.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Chaffey is called to order. The member for Chaffey well knows the standing orders. If he wishes to raise a point of order with the Chair, he has the power to do so.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for West Torrens! The Treasurer has the call.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer) (11:57): It might help those opposite if we have perhaps a more comprehensive re-examination of the history of the electricity networks here in South Australia.

Mr Teague: Absolutely. I am waiting for an extension of time.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The member for Heysen is keen to listen. He said, 'Absolutely.' So let's start, shall we? Let's start in 1997—that recently—when his acolytes in the South Australian Liberal movement, and I use the term 'Liberal movement' pejoratively, guaranteed the community, 'We will never, ever sell ETSA.' Those were the words, and then what happened? They managed to squeak back into government after enjoying a majority, not a totality but a majority, of 27 seats in this place.

They managed to squeak back into government after one term of government—sound familiar?—and what do they do? They sell ETSA, allegedly to pay down state debt. What were they doing when they were paying down state debt? The mastermind of the 2022 Liberal election campaign, Rob Lucas, while he was telling South Australians he was selling ETSA to pay down debt, was running up budget deficits and increasing the state's debt at the same time. Genius, right? But that is who has been leading them for 40 years in South Australia: Rob Lucas.

So they sell ETSA and there is a three-year price guarantee from the year 2000 for three years until January 2003 as part of the sale terms because we were promised as a state, under the privatisation, that power prices would fall as a result of privatisation. What happened in January 2003? Retail prices—not wholesale—went up 30 per cent after the price guarantee ended after three years: a 30 per cent increase.

Do not take my word for it, go down to the basement of the parliamentary library and pull out the front page of TheAdvertiser because that is where it was reported. You want to talk about Advertiser reportage? Go down and do your research. You do not even understand the history of the issue you are debating.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: If you want to know how rhetorically and intellectually bankrupt those opposite are, you only have to look at the Notice Paper and the ensuing debate that we have had here this morning. There was backslapping from the member for Morphett and the new member for Bragg about how great the South Australian Liberal Party is on climate change action and how they embrace renewables, how they are the party for the future when it comes to renewable energy and climate change action, and then fast-forward the tape 25 minutes and here they are rehashing the same old blame game about the statewide blackout for—that is right—being a race too quickly to renewables.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: This is just extraordinary.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: If you even fast-forward the tape from 2003—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Chaffey well knows the standing orders. If he wishes to raise a matter, he can do so.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It is a reflection on your rhetorical and intellectual incompetence and bankruptcy—that is what it is, member for Chaffey. That is what the reflection is: it is the mirror that we are holding up to you for your debate.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: That is the contrast we have had.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Heysen and the member for West Torrens will cease their exchange.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: We have had them embracing renewals and then blaming renewals in the space of 80 minutes. This is the modern South Australian Liberal Party—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —writ large in this state. Then, when we finally see the fruits of the state Liberal's privatisation of our electricity networks—

Mr Teague: Don't mislead the house.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —20 years of underinvestment, 20 years of price hikes, 20 years of vulnerability, and we get the coup de grâce that they are complaining about: a statewide blackout from a network, which, in private hands, in Chinese-controlled hands, has not kept up to date and falls into disrepair—

Mr Teague interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The first time we have a serious storm—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —out in the Far North, we have a statewide blackout, what do they say? 'It was the fault of a Labor government trying to modernise and reinvest public resources into an electricity network.'

Mr Whetstone: Hydrogen will fix it!

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: When we rolled out the member for West Torrens' energy plan to make our electricity network more robust, more resilient and, God forbid for those opposite, actually bring some prices down for the benefit of consumers, what do they do? Again, led by Rob Lucas, now that they had got back into government, they privatised that state's investment—they privatise it. They cannot help themselves.

Mr Teague: You are on the same Kool Aid.

The SPEAKER: The member for Heysen is called to order.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The member for Heysen says, 'There wasn't a privatisation; it was just a very long-term lease.' Are you joking? You may as well walk out and catch a tram or a train and say, 'Well, these are publicly provided services. They are not privatised; it's just a very, very long lease. Don't listen to what the Treasurer says about ETSA being privatised. It's just a very, very long lease.'

Mr Teague interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Heysen is warned.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It is just extraordinary—

Mr Teague: It was a disastrous decision.

The SPEAKER: Member for Heysen, come to order.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —that they would come in here and have the gall to put this matter on the Notice Paper and try to prosecute their bona fides about managing electricity networks. I remember very well the debate in this chamber straight after the statewide blackout. Those opposite, including the member for Chaffey, were criticising the former Weatherill government for not paying an aging coal-fired power station $90 million of taxpayers' money to stay open.

Mr Whetstone: That is not true.

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: That was the direct criticism. Do not take my word for it; look at the Hansard. They cancelled question time to make that very point. They had an urgent debate. They cancelled question time to make that very point. Ninety million dollars to pay to keep that coal-fired generator going, even though it could have been closed at a whim with a month's notice.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey!

Mr Whetstone: Little boy.

The SPEAKER: The member for Chaffey is called to order.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Just remarkable. The member for Chaffey says, 'Stop the personal attacks,' and then he interjects across the chamber calling me a little boy. This is the typical behaviour that we have got used to from the member for Chaffey. This is just extraordinary. Talk about the contrast between the complaints about standards of behaviour in this debate and then the personal attacks from the member for Chaffey!

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Chaffey will come to order.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It is just the same as the intellectual bankruptcy of what we have seen this morning, where they start calling themselves climate change champions and at the same time criticise this state's global leadership in renewable energy.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The truth is those opposite have no credibility on managing energy networks here in South Australia. Not only do they have absolutely no credibility, not only does the member for Heysen come in here, following the member for Morphett, claiming responsibility for delivering the member for West Torrens' energy security plan—that is how intellectually bankrupt those opposite are—not only do they come in here and say that it is actually the benefits of their labour, the fruits of their labour, that we had low energy prices because of renewable energy here in South Australia and because of new measures to enhance energy security, not only do they try to claim credit for that but they attack us for continuing to take policies to the community to enhance security.

Mr Teague interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The member for Heysen says that we were hell-bent on islanding South Australia. Maybe he has not been to Victoria, but between our state and that state there is a very large interconnector.

Mr Whetstone: Two.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It remains. Two, the member for Chaffey says. Well, you should sit next to the member for Heysen and whisper to him—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Treasurer will not respond to interjections and the members for Heysen and Chaffey will come to order.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —like the member for Schubert does to the Leader of the Opposition. He says, 'Oh, we were going it alone.' No-one has a policy in South Australia, except perhaps the member for Heysen, to get rid of the Heywood interconnector. He says 'island South Australia'. We have never been an island under the national electricity network.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Heysen, you well know the standing orders.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The member for Heysen says, 'You try talking to my constituents who couldn't flush their toilets.' I would ask the member for Heysen—in fact, I would invite him to reflect. He is a member of the Liberal Party, he is a member of the Liberal movement, he has signed up to this, presumably because during his adult years he saw the performance and the behaviour of the South Australian Liberal Party, their management and privatisation of our energy networks and said, 'I want a bit of that. I will seek preselection so that I can continue this legacy for the people of South Australia.'

That is the member for Heysen's record. That is the record of those opposite and that is why the member for Morphett and his motion have no credibility in this place whatsoever.

The SPEAKER: Members, it is a spirited debate and there is rhetorical flourish on both sides in order to maintain an open forum. I have been drawing members' attention to the standing orders, and I continue to draw members' attention to standing orders 141: the 'House does not permit quarrels', and 142, 'No noise or interruption allowed in debate'.

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (12:08): We will close debate, Mr Speaker.

The house divided on the amendment:

Ayes 23

Noes 10

Majority 13

AYES

Andrews, S.E. Boyer, B.I. Brock, G.G.
Brown, M.E. Champion, N.D. Close, S.E.
Cook, N.F. Fulbrook, J.P. Hildyard, K.A.
Hood, L.P. (teller) Hughes, E.J. Hutchesson, C.L.
Koutsantonis, A. Michaels, A. Mullighan, S.C.
Odenwalder, L.K. Pearce, R.K. Piccolo, A.
Savvas, O.M. Stinson, J.M. Szakacs, J.K.
Thompson, E.L. Wortley, D.J.

NOES

Basham, D.K.B. (teller) Batty, J.A. Cowdrey, M.J.
Gardner, J.A.W. Hurn, A.M. McBride, P.N.
Patterson, S.J.R. Teague, J.B. Telfer, S.J.
Whetstone, T.J.

PAIRS

Bettison, Z.L. Marshall, S.S. Bignell, L.W.K.
Speirs, D.J. Picton, C.J. Pisoni, D.G.
Clancy, N.P. Pederick, A.S. Malinauskas, P.B.
Tarzia, V.A.

Amendment thus carried.

The SPEAKER: The question before the Chair is that the motion as amended be agreed to. There is a point of order from the member for Morphett.

Mr PATTERSON: A closing statement, to close debate?

The SPEAKER: Debate has closed; the member for Adelaide has closed debate. If you have a point of order I will hear you on the point of order, but certainly the member for Adelaide closed debate. Member for Morphett, do you have a point of order?

Mr PATTERSON: No.

The house divided on the motion as amended:

Ayes 23

Noes 11

Majority 12

AYES

Andrews, S.E. Boyer, B.I. Brock, G.G.
Brown, M.E. Champion, N.D. Close, S.E.
Cook, N.F. Fulbrook, J.P. Hildyard, K.A.
Hood, L.P. (teller) Hughes, E.J. Hutchesson, C.L.
Koutsantonis, A. Michaels, A. Mullighan, S.C.
Odenwalder, L.K. Pearce, R.K. Piccolo, A.
Savvas, O.M. Stinson, J.M. Szakacs, J.K.
Thompson, E.L. Wortley, D.J.

NOES

Basham, D.K.B. (teller) Batty, J.A. Cowdrey, M.J.
Gardner, J.A.W. Hurn, A.M. McBride, P.N.
Patterson, S.J.R. Pratt, P.K. Teague, J.B.
Telfer, S.J. Whetstone, T.J.

PAIRS

Bettison, Z.L. Pisoni, D.G. Bignell, L.W.K.
Pederick, A.S. Picton, C.J. Tarzia, V.A.
Clancy, N.P. Marshall, S.S. Malinauskas, P.B.
Speirs, D.J.

Motion as amended thus carried.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT