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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-02-14 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Renewable Energy

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:32): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Climate Change a question about South Australia's transition to renewable energy.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Mr Lew Owens, in his capacity as Chairman of the Essential Services Commission of South Australia, gave evidence to the Environment, Resources and Development Committee's wind farm inquiry on 24 November 2003. I quote directly from Mr Owens' statement:

…as you start to increase the quantity of wind power coming into that system, up to 100 megawatts, 200 megawatts, or whatever, you start to cause this instability in the rest of the system where, for example, if we had 1,000 megawatts of wind energy coming in, most base load stations in South Australia would be required to shut down, and to then start them up again is a 10-hour operation. There becomes a physical limit to just how much of this wind energy, which can be at full capacity one hour and down to zero the next hour, you can actually fit into the system.

Some 14 years ago the Chairman of the Essential Services Commission gave an unequivocal and express warning to a parliamentary committee, no less, about the instability excess wind power would cause to our electrical system.

I point out that at that time the members of that committee were myself, and a couple of other members, but, more importantly, the Hon. Gail Gago—who went on to be the third most senior person in the government, leader of the government in the council, and a senior member of the Labor cabinet table—and also Mr Tom Koutsantonis MP, member for West Torrens, who has gone on to have a distinguished career as Treasurer and energy minister, sitting some 10 years around the cabinet table. My questions to the minister are:

1. Does the minister agree with the statement made by the former chairman of the Essential Services Commission?

2. As the minister considers Mr Owens' warning, can the minister explain why the government has repeatedly ignored independent expert advice about the instability that would be caused by its aggressive pursuit of wind energy?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:34): I thank the honourable member for his most important question and for welcoming all members back to parliament this year. The first cab off the rank and the Liberals go back to 2003, back to a report from 2003. Then, they follow up with a charge to me of ignoring independent expert advice. Well, goodness gracious, 'independent expert advice'!

Let me quote from an article from The Age, under the heading 'PM told wind not to blame for blackout'. The article states:

Turnbull government statements blaming last year's South Australian blackout on its high renewable energy target ignored confidential Public Service advice stating it was not the cause.

The Hon. Mr Ridgway wants to talk about people ignoring expert advice: he has no further to look than his own Prime Minister, who ignored his own Public Service advice, contradicting everything the Prime Minister and his government ministers came out and said in subsequent days—his own Public Service expert advice ignored. Mr Mark Kenny, the author of The Age article, goes on:

With a febrile debate over renewable energy versus coal raging in Canberra, emails obtained under freedom of information laws are set to undermine the Coalition's energy messaging and shatter confidence in its call for investment certainty through sober debate and bipartisan policy solutions.

How can you believe that this government at a federal level would even consider bipartisan and sober debate when they ignore the expert advice of their own public servants?

The Hon. Mr Ridgway comes in here, dredging back to reports from 2003, trying to look for a hook, and all he has done is put his own Prime Minister on the hook for ignoring his own government Public Service advice about the cause of blackouts. So, let's not fool ourselves: not one power outage in South Australia has been caused by renewables.

Claims by the federal government and Steven Marshall, the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Dunstan in the other place, to the contrary are all false. The 28 September statewide blackout resulted from tornadoes ripping 23 transmission towers out of the ground. A picture paints a thousand words: you only have to look at that photograph to understand what was the cause of that blackout.

Here we have the Hon. David Ridgway, a man who has a pathological hatred of wind energy, dredging back to 2003, an old report, when he only has to go back to this month to see the reports of his own Prime Minister, his own federal government, totally ignoring advice that contradicted claims they were making in the public realm.

This is a man who has gone out of his way—the Prime Minister I am talking about here—to repudiate his previous positions on renewable energy. This is a man, the Prime Minister for Sydney Harbour mansions, who has instead said one thing to the Australian community right now, which is a complete reversal of his position of a few years ago when he was opposition leader, yet I am advised by another article in the Australian Financial Review that he has himself gone off and installed intermittent renewable energy, with battery backup, on his Point Piper pile.

So, one message for the community: one message that coal is good, that we are going back to the 1850s, but not for me as Prime Minister, I am going to invest in renewables myself because I still secretly believe what I fervently believed years ago when I was opposition leader but what I am not allowed to say anymore because the right wing of the Liberal Party and the National Party won't let me say it.

Now we have, here in South Australia, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Steven Marshall, member for Dunstan, having just said that he is going to abdicate all responsibility, should he be elected premier, and give it to Malcolm Turnbull and the federal government to set renewable energy targets. At the behest of the Liberal Party right wing, and the National Party that wags their tail, we have Steven Marshall, Leader of the Opposition, member for Dunstan, lining himself up with the climate change denying Barnaby Joyce, Deputy Prime Minister, as he fails to stand up for South Australia.

He is going to hand over all his powers, should he ever be elected as premier, to the federal government and say, 'Please, federal government, look after us; just in exactly the same way you looked after us on Holden; just in exactly the same way you looked after us when you were trying to sell us down the river on our Murray-Darling negotiations; just as you were going to sell us down the river in allocating the submarine build to Japanese off-the-shelf products.' That is what Steven Marshall was saying. That is his plan for South Australia: abdicate all responsibility of leadership, hand it up to the federal government and wash his hands of it like Pontius Pilate and say, 'It wasn't my fault; the Prime Minister did it.'

We see him coming out again this week with mixed messages, just like Malcolm Turnbull. Mixed messages about leaving nuclear on the table for energy generation; mixed messages about jettisoning the RET. Goodness gracious, he takes a phone call from Dan van Holst Pellekaan, the member for Stuart, who says, 'You can't take that position. I'll lose my seat up there in Port Augusta.' Then Mr Marshall again comes out and says, 'Well, okay, except for Solar Thermal at Port Augusta. Other than that, other renewables are off the table.'

This is an opposition that is spinning out of control. They are running around looking for an idea and trying to deal themselves into the game. All they can come up with is to say to the Prime Minister, 'Please take this problem away from us.' They do not deserve even the faintest consideration for leadership of this state.

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