Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull attacks Australian Labor Party over South Australia electricity crisis
PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull has lashed Labor and the South Australian Government as harshly as storms have lashed the state this summer.
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PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull has lashed Labor and the South Australian Government as harshly as storms have lashed the state this summer.
At the beginning of Question Time, Mr Turnbull took no time to raise yesterday’s blackout, saying “every single” South Australian was worse off because of the “Labor left ideological approach to power”.
“Every single one (South Australian) that wants to turn the lights on, wants to put the air conditioner on, wants to have a job, wants to have some investment,” Mr Turnbull said.
“Yesterday, 41 degrees — 41 degrees, no power. That was great, what a great achievement. This is the triumph of the Labor Party.
“The Labor Party threatens every job, every business. They have a set of policies (and) every single one is designed to discourage investment and discourage employment.
“On energy, we don’t have to theorise about what their (Labor’s) policies will do, we don’t need an economic model, we’ve got the state of South Australia.”
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg then that he has spoken with the market operator which “disputes” the SA Government’s claims it was to blame.
“But I have spoken, yesterday and this morning, to the market operator. And the market operator has made it very clear he disputes the Labor Party — Jay Weatherill and the Federal Labor Party — trying to blame the umpire for the bad game that they’ve played when it comes to South Australia’s energy mix,” Mr Frydenberg said.
Mr Frydenberg also took aim at the State Government.
“When Jay Weatherill did a press conference this morning, the Premier of South Australia ... he said ‘if they had a carbon price, they could have avoided the blackout last night’,” Mr Frydenberg said.
“The Premier of South Australia thinks more tax means more wind. The Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said wind had nothing to do with it, even though wind only got down to providing 2.5 per cent of supply.
“And now we have the member for Port Adelaide (Mark Butler) trying to blame the operator. Next he’ll be telling us the operator killed Kennedy. Next he will be telling us that the operator sunk the Titanic. Next he will be telling us that the operator powered the submarine that took Harold Holt.
“It wasn’t the operator’s fault, it was Jay Weatherill’s fault and now the Leader of the Opposition wants to take this horror show national with a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target.”
But federal Opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler asked why AEMO, which reports to Mr Frydenberg, “force blackouts on South Australians last night when there was sufficient spare gas generation capacity at Pelican Point which the federal regulator refused to turn on”.