Jay Weatherill and Josh Frydenberg in heated Adelaide press conference - read the full transcript
SOUTH Australian Premier Jay Weatherill unleashed on Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg in a terse and heated press conference in Adelaide on Thursday. Read the full transcript.
- Furious politicians trade insults at fiery press conference
- Josh versus Jay: What they were really thinking – probably
- How Weatherill and Frydenberg’s fiery press conference went down
SOUTH Australian Premier Jay Weatherill unleashed on Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg in a terse and heated press conference in Adelaide on Thursday. Read the full transcript below.
JAY WEATHERILL: Yes, it shows the Commonwealth Government are in a white-knuckled panic about national energy policy. I mean, it’s a $2 billion admission that the national energy market is broken and there needs to be public investments to actually fix it up, and that’s exactly what was at the heart of our plan.
We are not going to wait four to seven years though, to invest in some snowy hydro scheme.
We are investing here so that South Australia can become self-sufficient.
I have got to say, it is a little galling to be standing here next to a man that has been standing up with his Prime Minister bagging South Australia at every step of the way over the last six months to be standing here on this occasion, him suggesting that we want to work together.
It is a disgrace the way your government has treated our state – it’s the most anti-South Australian government we have seen from a Commonwealth Government in living memory.
What we have is a national energy market that is broken.
We had a Prime Minister that came in here to this state during the course of the last federal election campaign celebrating our leadership in relation to renewable energy and then taking credit for it through his own renewable energy target, and for you to then turn around with in a few short months when there is a blackout and point the finger at South Australia for the fact that our leadership in renewable energy was the cause of that problem is an absolute disgrace ... and you would be standing here trying to take credit for some small scheme which goes nowhere near fixing the size and the extent of the problems that have been created an outrage.
This is a plan which is about making us self-sufficient in this country.
Let’s just think about this $2 billion investment.
It is going to be in four to seven years’ time, it will probably only just pick up the natural growth in demands that will occur over that time, it will barely pick up the loss of power generation in relation to Hazelwood.
What we’ve seen over the last few years in this country is about 5000 megawatts of loss of installed generation capacity and the reason we have lost that installed generation capacity is because of a lack of a coherent national energy policy, and the coherent national energy policy that almost every commentator is calling for is a price on carbon.
Now the minister has just told you that we should await the outcome of the Finkel Inquiry.
Mr Finkel, in his preliminary report, recommended that an emissions intensity scheme was the cheapest and most effective way of sending the right price signals into the market to make sure that we get that new investment in generation in this country.
And then Mr Frydenberg, who went out and actually promoted the emissions intensity scheme, was within a couple of hours cut down by his Prime Minister, and that was ruled out of Mr Finkel’s review.
So the first, best solution that Mr Finke was recommending and would have otherwise been in his review has already been ruled out by this federal government, so for the minister to stand here and suggest that we should await the outcome of an inquiry that he has already nobbled is to say the least galling, now we know what Mr Frydenberg really thinks and that he believes in an emissions intensity scheme – that’s why he went out and publicly advocated for it.
It must have been a source of humiliation for him to be cut down by his Prime Minister within hours of publicly supporting that scheme.
Now, when the Prime Minister and the minister recover their courage and decide to advocate for something that they know is the right policy solution, we will be supportive of it.
Now the truth is that they know what the right thing is, we know what the right thing is, and when they recover their memory about what the right thing to do is, we will be there ready to support them. So while this is a positive occasion here today, I’m sad that I had to break in on it, as this is the first opportunity I have had of standing next to Mr Frydenberg.
I am sick and tired of getting these criticisms across the airwaves from the eastern states about South Australia.
We can’t wait for a Snowdon Mountain scheme in four to seven years’ time. We have a plan to make South Australia self-sufficient, to stand on our own two feet today, and that’s what we are getting on with.
REPORTER: (to Josh Frydenberg) Have you have anything say minister to the Premier face-to-face, while he is standing right next to you labelling your actions disgraceful?
JOSH FRYDENBERG: Well look, the Premier made a $550 million admission of failure just a couple of days ago. Clearly he has a big job to do to explain to the South Australian people why on his watch the lights went out. Not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. Unfortunately for Jay Weatherill, he has to explain to the South Australian people why they are paying nearly 50 per cent more for their electricity than other people across the national electricity market.
Unfortunately for the Premier, he has to explain why he boasted about creating a big experiment here in South Australia, while one of his ministers, Ian Hunter, said that South Australia was a laboratory, and now they have to reach into their pockets $550 million to solve a problem that they created themselves with initiatives which won’t, in fact, completely solve the problem for South Australia.
So I feel that the Premier, trying to come into this, to crash-tackle us, at this announcement, where he hasn’t put any money into this important initiative which the Commonwealth and AGL have, (it) just shows you, unfortunately, how desperate he is, and so I would say to you that it’s in the best interests of South Australia for your government to work with the other states at the COAG energy council table to await the outcomes of the Finkel review, to commend the Commonwealth for yesterday’s announcement with the LNG providers, that they will provide the gas to meet the shortfalls in the coming years, including for the people of South Australia, and that today’s announcement by the Prime Minister, the Snowy hydro, is much bigger than Jay Weatherill, its much bigger than the politics of the Labor Party, it’s indeed much bigger than the failures of his government, it’s about the future of energy policy right across the east coast of our country.
The Prime Minister should be commended for his leadership, for his investment in such a nation-building project, and I actually think it reflects very poorly on the Premier that he has to engage in this type of petty politics, when really, today’s announcement is about a Commonwealth and an industry and a player such as AGL coming together to announce that we will put in place 1000 batteries and solar PV across this city to ensure that we move to a lower emissions future, for driving down the cost of electricity and ensuring a more stable systems.
REPORTER: So collectively, gentleman, between you today, you have made the relationship between the state and the Commonwealth more toxic than it has ever been. Are you proud of that?
JOSH FRYDENBERG: Well, I certainly haven’t come with that intention. Unfortunately, Jay Weatherill has come here to crash-tackle us when we are making an announcement about a financial commitment to the energy system in South Australia.
REPORTER: With all due respect, minister, your comments over the last couple of days haven’t been that friendly towards the state government.
JOSH FRYDENBERG: My comments to the South Australian government, and by the way they didn’t give the Commonwealth any heads-up over their announcement, so you would have thought if the South Australian Government was intent on producing the best outcomes for their constituents, they would work with the Federal Government, but there was no pre-warning of those particular announcements.
REPORTER: Did the Federal Government give any warning to the State Government about the Snowy hydro expansion?
JOSH FRYDENBERG: But that has got nothing to…
JAY WEATHERILL: Nor the New South Wales minister.
JOSH FRYDENBERG: … Sorry, the Prime Minister spoke to the Premier. To Jay, if you want to make comments, I would hope that you would get your facts right. So the point about it is, that we do support more investment in battery storage, we do support more incentives for land owners, and they were part of the package that the South Australian Government has announced, but what we don’t support is a state going it alone to solve a problem, which going it alone created the problem.
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