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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-18 Daily Xml
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Net Zero

Ms O'HANLON (Dunstan) (14:23): My question is to the Minister for Energy and Mining. Can the minister explain how cohesion and discipline within a government can strengthen action on net zero for the people of South Australia, and what are the outcomes of alternative approaches?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:24): Last week I spoke on how cohesion and discipline in government can deliver very strong policy. We have certainly had that with energy policy, and we have received—

Mr Patterson: Highest power prices on record, excellent. Bin the hydrogen. Excellent. Great plan.

The SPEAKER: The member for Morphett—last warning, which also is your first warning.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I suspected my young friend would walk straight into the trap. So I thought what I would do—self-praise is no praise, right? It's better to have people quote what they think about your policy, so I thought what I would do in the chamber is let people know what people have said about Labor's policies on energy:

So the previous Premier—

Jay Weatherill—

was actually a bit of a visionary, and I will give him some credit, not only for that but also for green energy in this state. The current—

that is, the former Liberal—

government can now boast and beat its chest about renewable energy in South Australia, but in actual fact it was the previous Labor government that kickstarted it…

That's high praise.

The Hon. N.D. Champion: Who said that?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Well, there's more:

I acknowledge the work of previous Labor Premier Jay Weatherill and the Hon. Tom Koutsantonis—

now, self-praise means nothing—

in their push for renewables in this state where we now see the state as one of the leaders in the world for producing renewable energy with massive wind farms and solar farms.

That is high praise. Do you know who said that? The watchdog. The Liberal candidate in Waite.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Now, I thought I better check for authenticity, right? So do you check AI, or do you check Hansard? I checked Hansard, and it's a goal. It's a goal. So when you have got Liberal candidates praising your energy policy, it really undermines the interjections of the shadow minister and undermines his ability to be cohesive. When you have people who are praising the government's policy on energy, it makes you wonder what they must be thinking internally about cohesion: 'Why can't we have the same cohesion the government does?'

There's more. There's more about this lack of cohesion. There are professionals within the Liberal Party who have very different views about net zero. They have very different views about net zero. In fact their party's state director put together a list of policy motions for the Liberal Party to consider adopting, including some energy policies which I have yet to see released. They include, and wait for it: it calls for an abandonment of net zero targets; pausing building transmission infrastructure to renewable projects—that is, actually using the regulatory powers of the government to stop transmission lines being built to new generation that can lower prices; supporting nuclear power, despite the results of the most recent federal election; and proposing a new nuclear dump in South Australia, something that the previous opposition, the then Marshall opposition, opposed.

So when you see this lack of cohesion, a lack of direction—you have one candidate in the Liberal Party praising the government's policies, then a state council debating whether or not you should even have transmission lines built to renewable energy—it is no wonder the members opposite lack the cohesion to form a government.

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