House debates

Tuesday, 14 February 2017

Questions without Notice

Energy Security

2:04 pm

Photo of Malcolm TurnbullMalcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Only today, the Treasurer and I met with the Committee for Adelaide, a South Australian business group. Those business leaders are feeling the full brunt of what Jay Weatherill called his 'great experiment'. Well, it is an experiment that has failed. It has failed workers; it has failed businesses; and it has failed households. The chairman, Colin Goodall, said: 'Power has become a daily conversation in South Australia. It is difficult to attract new businesses to South Australia due to electricity being unreliable.' Those views were reinforced by every member of his delegation. One member said that he was considering moving his business out of South Australia and that he was not able to expand in the way his competitors interstate were able to expand, because of unavailable, unreliable and unaffordable power. Colin Goodall, the chairman of the committee said, 'South Australia is the canary in the coalmine.'

That is where Australia's energy situation will end up if the Labor Party are allowed to carry out their policies. In South Australia, they recognise the consequence of this unplanned introduction of a massive amount of wind power and variable renewable energy into the grid without any plan and without any proper analysis of how it could be integrated. We know what happened. We have seen it.

The Labor Party and the opposition leader should explain how their 50 per cent renewable energy target is going to work out—

Ms Plibersek interjecting

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