Matthew Abraham: Heatwave has Weatherill and Koutsantonis sweating on no power blackouts

JAY Weatherall and Tom Koutsantonis have invested millions of taxpayers dollars in the hope there are no major power blackouts this summer – their re-election depends on it, says Matthew Abraham

THE power went off in Yankalilla on Wednesday morning and a heavy, baking hot silence descended on the holiday house.

It was around 8.15am and the Smart TV, all warmed up to bring us the appalling Noddy Toyland Detective, became a Dumb TV. Small mercies.

The wireless broadband shut up shop.

The ducted evaporative airconditioning fell silent.

The coffee machine was cactus. And the electric kettle.

We had to have cold showers because the instant gas hot-water service had no ignition spark.

Gasp. The iPad batteries were running into the red zone.

Outraged, I used the mobile phone to check the SA Power Networks outages page and discovered they had deliberately pulled the plug on our rented hacienda.

It was one of 49 lucky properties chosen on this hot pocket of the Fleurieu to be disconnected from the power grid for “planned maintenance”. Their best people were working on it and thought the power should be back on by about 3.30pm.

Life as we knew it had come to a screeching halt.

When we were young and the power went off in summer, nobody really noticed because nothing much was plugged in.

Only the rich kids up the end of the street, the family with the Clarke above-ground pool, had airconditioning. The solitary fan in our house just stirred the hot air around the lounge room like a wooden spoon in porridge.

Now, it is impossible to ignore a blackout. Not only does it disconnect us from the grid – and all the creature comforts that go with it – but it also severs us from the internet and that makes people really cranky.

And so we enter the Tom Koutsantonis Great Big Summer of Pain.

Koutsantonis, the Treasurer and Energy Minister, who is quite capable of talking under wet cement, knows that if South Australia experiences another disgraceful summer blackout in the countdown to the March election, he and his few surviving colleagues will have a nice long holiday on the opposition benches.

It is the one issue that will totally blow apart the Weatherill Government’s carefully crafted, pork-barrelled run to the polls.

On Wednesday night, Koutsantonis gave his hand away in a Seven News story warning of approaching Armageddon, in the guise of two forecast 41C days.

Referring to the power generation on tap to handle the expected demand, he said: “In terms of capacity, we’ll be fine. Turn on your airconditioners. It will be OK.”

Sorry? Would you mind repeating that? I don’t think I heard it correctly.

Do you mean that suddenly, after a decade of telling us to turn our airconditioners off in a heatwave and, instead, try sitting in a darkened room with a damp cloth over our heads, it’s now OK to turn them on?

As he spoke, he had the nervous look of a man pushing a pile of chips across the roulette table and telling the croupier “Put the lot on red”.

It has taken them 14 years but the Weatherill Government has belatedly confronted the problems it created with the party’s simplistic push into renewable energy without also ensuring the power network has stability and alternative capacity – battery back-up and diesel generators.

But even with stacks of juice in the system, most power blackouts have nothing to do with governments. So what?

The political reality for Labor – only weeks away from polling day – is that SA voters are highly sensitised to blackouts, expect them and will blame the government when the lights go off.

Koutsantonis was only eight when another Labor heavyweight, Des Corcoran, the state’s 37th Premier, called a snap election barely seven months after succeeding Don Dunstan.

In the final days of the campaign, the transport union called a lightning strike and, on some routes, bus drivers turfed passengers, including schoolchildren, off at random bus stops in the middle of a downpour.

This stupidity had nothing to do with Premier Corcoran but the voters blamed him anyway. Labor was defeated, suffering an 8 per cent swing, and legend has it you could track the biggest swings in the electorates along the bus routes where passengers were dumped.

Cranky voters. Enough to make any politician break out in a cold sweat.