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

I want to thank the member for Barker, who knows that energy security is fundamental to the provision of safety and patient care in our healthcare services and hospitals. I know myself that I warned on 17 August, when I was in South Australia, of the serious and significant risks to their infrastructure and energy security from the South Australian experiment, which the Leader of the Opposition wants to adopt nationally. We know, however, that this has translated to real and significant consequences for the South Australian healthcare system. On 8 February, during the most recent round of blackouts, what we saw in Millicent, Penola, Murray Bridge and Mount Gambier was that those hospitals were all forced onto backup generators. Quite significantly, the South Australian energy minister at the time tried to say that critical infrastructure such as hospitals would be exempt from load shedding. It was then up to a South Australian government official to correct it and make the small correction that smaller hospitals and healthcare facilities across South Australia may be affected from time to time. Well, they were. And so four significant hospitals and facilities, including the state's largest regional hospital, were forced onto generators.

But generators may not always work in a time of crisis. We saw that on the 28 September blackout. Remember the blackout that was just a 'hiccup', according to the member for Port Adelaide? On that day, the Flinders Medical Centre generator failed. What was the consequence of that failure? Embryos waiting to be transferred to a fertility clinic—

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

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