Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday was Adelaide's 13th straight day over 40 degrees and my home city of Melbourne has had seven straight days of over 40 degrees. These heatwaves are quite debilitating, as anyone living through them can testify. They are not only unpleasant but also dangerous. The Melbourne heatwave of 2009, which preceded the Black Saturday fires, was killing people well before the fires did. In Victoria, there was a 62 per cent increase in deaths over the normal rate, some 374 deaths more than the average. Not only are the heatwaves unpleasant and dangerous but also they generate massive extra electricity use and potentially threaten electricity shortages and blackouts at the time our cities can least afford them. We hear a lot about the need for baseline energy but the fact is that we need electricity to meet peak demand.

For South Australia, a bright spot in this rather grim picture has been the performance of its solar PV. During the heatwave nine per cent of South Australia's electricity demand was met by solar PV. Not only that, Australia's only solar panel manufacturing plant, Tindo Solar, is based in South Australia. The contribution of solar PV to meeting peak demand during heatwaves and the manufacturing jobs in solar PV that South Australia very much needs will be under threat if the carbon price is abolished and if the renewable energy target is tampered with. I urge the Liberal government to leave the renewable energy target alone. It is doing a power of good and in a world of heatwaves we are going to need it more than ever.