Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

However, the same event at the same time in a different state—South Australia—played out in a different way, where hospitals in Millicent, in Mount Gambier and in Penola were all forced on to backup generation because they were forced to have load shedding because the South Australian grid was unstable.

Opposition members interjecting—

And I hear mentions of backup generators. The problem is, it does not always work. We know that in September the Port Augusta hospital had its power go down and then its backup generator go down, and that is the problem: the people opposite have no conception that if you really care about health you have to really care about a stable energy system. That is why the Prime Minister is responding to the South Australian energy debacle with a plan for the second great wave of the Snowy hydro scheme to create the greatest battery storage system in the Southern Hemisphere, increasing by 50 per cent storage that supplies to the grid the stability that is needed for our hospitals, for our health system, for our kidney machines, for our dialysis machines and for our ventilators. These are the reasons energy security matters. This is why an expansion of stability through the Snowy hydro scheme does not matter just to the electricity system, does not matter just to the energy system but matters also to the health system. If you compare that with the opposition's approach, which is to increase instability in the grid, decrease stability in the health system—(Time expired)

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