David Penberthy: Surely even the SA Libs couldn’t lose from here
LABOR will be seeking an almost unthinkable 20 years in power at the 2018 election. But energy policy, health and jobs are a three-pronged skewer in this Government’s tired old behind.
THE next state election might be 18 months away but there is a chance that the State Labor Government could lose it in the next 12 weeks.
Day one of this summer brought with it a blackout, less than two hours into the season. The prospect of a summer-long series of outages could be politically unsurvivable for a Government that has failed to convince the public that it has an explanation when things go wrong with our power supply, and a strategy to put things right.
At the end of this year, on the cusp of a politically crucial pre-election year, it is worth taking stock of where things stand in our state.
Labor will be seeking an almost unthinkable 20 years in power when it goes to the 2018 poll.
Do not be surprised if that figure itself forms the basis of a negative Liberal advertisement.
Ably assisted by pathetic Liberal factionalism, dubious electoral boundaries, and Jay Weatherill’s remarkable ability to convince many voters that the Government somehow changed hands when he knifed Mike Rann, Labor has already governed beyond what would conventionally be regarded as its use-by date.
The longer you’re in power, the more lead you collect in your saddlebags. There are three key things weighing on the Weatherill Government. Energy policy, health and jobs. It is a live question whether and how the Libs will capitalise on these issues. What is more clear is that the Government is currently handling none of them especially well.
The energy crisis in SA has flushed out every neo-con and climate sceptic in the land, certainly at The Australian newspaper, where an informal contest is under way as to who can pour the most scorn on our struggling state. We have brought this scorn upon ourselves.
I am someone who believes in climate change and believes that we have to have a renewables future. The problem is that we clearly do not have a renewables present.
The power generated by solar and wind is intermittent and cannot yet be adequately stored. By embarking on the hasty and hairy-chested execution of a perfectly viable coal-fired power station, unpleasant as coal might be, our state now wins an A for environmental purity and an F for keeping the lights on, and keeping businesses capable of paying their bills and their staff.
We were so determined to go down the renewables path that we now have an unreliable and expensive power supply, plugged into the Victorian interconnector from which we can be disconnected at a whim, and unable to fund an interconnector to NSW.
Jay Weatherill and Ian Hunter might have got a round of applause at the Paris Summit but I suspect the tone of the meeting was different when BHP gathered a few weeks ago to tally up the $100 million damages bill from the power outage earlier this year.
Energy is a three-pronged skewer in this Government’s tired old behind. It hurts average families because power now costs so damned much, it has also clobbered businesses financially, especially when their previous locked-in contracts expired, and it feeds directly into the jobs crisis because it makes businesses think twice about staying here, or never think about coming here.
I have no clear idea what the State Liberals are proposing to fix all of this, but Steven Marshall may have the whip hand with a friendly conservative government in power federally, able to help craft an SA-specific solution which the state Libs can claim as their own.
On health, the State Government has lurched from one disaster to the next with cancer patients being misdiagnosed, the Transforming Health blueprint looking increasingly friendless, and concerns of clinicians over the EPAS patient record computer system.
The biggie is the new RAH, mired in protracted delays and legal threats. The project is such a shambles that the Women’s and Children’s Hospital can no longer be rebuilt at the new RAH site, a tragedy which will deny the state the benefit of a co-located facility for mums and kids next to a brand-new major hospital.
On health, the Libs are promising to kill Transforming Health and suspend the rollout of EPAS on safety grounds, two things that may resonate with voters. I am not sure what they can do about the new RAH, as contractually the project is too far gone to unscramble.
On jobs and growth, it is almost 18 months since Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis brought down a so-called jobs budget, after which SA has continued to have the highest or second-highest rate of unemployment in the land. The Government argues, limply, that things would be even worse jobs-wise without the business and transactional tax cuts announced in 2015. Personally I suspect those tax cuts are largely irrelevant in a state where the biggest business issue is cost of power.
Expect the Libs to run a repeat of their 2014 tax arguments, promising that payroll tax in particular should be reduced further to take the load off small and medium businesses. It remains to be seen if a fresh dose of economic trickle-down theory will excite voters a second time.
The next election is the Liberals’ for the losing. God knows they have done it before. It would take a special kind of genius for them to do it a fifth time in a row.
They are only a couple of serious power failures from looking unstoppable. Similar assessments were being made the last time Labor won.