House debates

Thursday, 7 September 2017

Matters of Public Importance

Energy

3:34 pm

Photo of Josh FrydenbergJosh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Port Adelaide is entitled to his own opinions, but he's not entitled to his own facts. In his state of South Australia, they were the only state in the history of the Commonwealth to have a statewide blackout. In his state of South Australia, people were stuck in elevators. Tuna fishermen lost their catch. The member for Grey knows what happened at the Port Pirie smelter. He knows what happened for BHP at Olympic Dam. He knows what happened for Arrium at Whyalla. He knows what happened to the pensioners in Adelaide, and he knows what happened to the small businesses in Stirling and Bridgewater. He knows what happened to Adelaide Brighton, in the member for Port Adelaide's own electorate—that is, they lost their power because of the ideology and idiocy of the Weatherill government, a Labor government that has been in power for nearly 16 years, longer than Caesar ruled Rome.

The Labor Party want to blame someone else for their own mistakes. The member for Port Adelaide called the blackout in South Australia, worth upwards of half a billion dollars plus much, much more, 'merely a hiccup', because the member for Port Adelaide doesn't take it seriously. Now Jay Weatherill goes out there and says, 'We're on the right track.' Is it on the right track to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money in his own state to build a new gas-fired generator? Is it good policy for the Labor Party in South Australia to spend $110 million buying diesel generators that use 80,000 litres of diesel an hour?

Mr Husic interjecting

Ms Flint interjecting

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