Paul Starick: Alinta letter on cost to keep Port Augusta power station open could give Liberals the election

THIS is the document that Liberal leader Steven Marshall desperately hopes will make him Premier in March next year.

• MAIN REPORT: $25m to keep it open to keep power station open
• THE FIX: Premier’s $550m plan for SA’s power crisis
• THE REPORT: What caused the statewide blackout
• POWER DOSSIER: SA’s energy crisis explained

THIS is the document that Liberal leader Steven Marshall desperately hopes will make him Premier in March next year.

It is, he believes, the smoking gun which exposes Premier Jay Weatherill’s rejection of an affordable deal to keep power prices down and prevent blackouts.

Mr Marshall’s ambitions for the impact he hopes the letter will have are revealed in his claim that “this is the biggest failure of a State Government since the State Bank disaster” in 1991.

CLICK HERE to read the full letter

That financial collapse triggered an overwhelming mood for change at the 1993 election, when Labor was thrown out after holding power since 1982. Mr Marshall wants to create a similar mood to obliterate a Labor regime in power for 15 years and counting.

He is determined to sheet home the blame for statewide blackouts and high electricity prices to Mr Weatherill, alleging Labor has sold out South Australians with an ideological pursuit of renewable energy.

This argument is bolstered by the $25 million cost over three years to keep the 520MW Port Augusta power plant generating electricity until mid-2018.

The Liberals will push Mr Weatherill in parliament over coming days, contrasting the $25 million Alinta bid with his $550 million package headlined by a $360 million, government-owned gas-fired power plant and giant battery.

They will argue Mr Weatherill was ideologically obsessed to the point where he would not extend the life of a coal-fired plant to enable the impact of its eventual closure on the SA power grid to be properly planned and dealt with.

It is a battering ram desperately needed by the Liberals, despite an electoral boundary redraw which has installed them as favourites to win the next election, on March 17 next year.

Advertiser/Galaxy opinion polls in three key marginal seats this month showed Mr Weatherill leading Mr Marshall as preferred premier in two of them.

Mr Marshall could — and should — be well ahead in this significant indicator of voting intention at next March’s poll. Labor has taken plenty of hits, particularly over power security since the statewide blackout last September.

But Mr Weatherill has further demonstrated his political skill by turning the tables on Mr Marshall with a simple message — South Australian power for South Australians.

He has capitalised on state pride and lingering antagonism about ETSA’s 1999 privatisation with a cleverly delivered policy to build the 250MW generator and “Australia’s largest battery” to store wind and solar energy.

The mantra was personally reinforced when Mr Weatherill spectacularly confronted federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg at a press conference this month. Drawing on generations of parochialism, Mr Weatherill branded the federal Coalition “the most anti-South Australian Commonwealth government in living memory” and dramatically declared himself “sick and tired of getting these criticisms across the airwaves from the eastern states about SA”.

Mr Weatherill turned the tables by making simple the complex issue of electricity and being seen, rightly or wrongly, to stand up for his state.

His Liberal opponent is banking on the release of this Alinta letter to expose Mr Weatherill’s claims as empty bluster at the expense of everyday South Australians’ energy security and hip pockets.

Whether Mr Marshall and his troops succeed in this critical battle in the South Australian electricity war will go a long way to determining the result next March.