Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What an excellent question you ask. What is the difference? The difference was $18,000. He said to me, 'I'm now dividing that by how much it costs me to employ someone for a month, and that will be the number of people I have to sack.' That is hostage No. 3.

I will give you what is perhaps the fourth hostage. He came to my electorate, saw a disused industrial facility and thought he could breathe life into it. The member for Wandin knows this man well. He is a significant investor in his electorate as well. He thought: 'I can breathe life into this facility. I can employ people in Tony's electorate.' So he set about building this facility, which is export focused. It will take products from my electorate, it will process them, and we will export them to the world. The mistake he made was that he entered into all of these arrangements—and he is proceeding with this development; all credit to him—before he worked out the cost of electricity in South Australia. He told me that the cost is nearly $2.5 million a year more than if the facility had been built in Victoria. I think we could comfortably say that is hostage No. 4.

I say to those opposite and to the shadow minister and member for Port Adelaide: if you really cared about South Australians, if you really cared about the future of South Australia, you would junk your 50 per cent target and you would tell your state mates to do the same.

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