Power outage complaints ‘unreasonable’: Richard Di Natale

Richard Di Natale blames energy policy for bushfires and says those moaning about outages should think of “sacrifices made during wartime”.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale. Picture: AAP

Greens leader Richard Di Natale has blamed an over-reliance on coal and energy policy failures for the Tasmanian bushfires and the increased risk of bushfires near his family home.

“Coal is the reason we’re here the reason we are seeing these record breaking conditions we have these massive fires in Tasmania,” he told Sky News.

“I just said goodbye to my wife and kids we live in a bushfire prone area we had to execute our fire plan today and that’s happening more and more frequently. The reason we’re in this position is because we’re digging up coal we’re polluting the atmosphere and we’re making climate change worse.”

Senator Di Natale has a family farm in Victoria’s Otway Ranges.

.@RichardDiNatale: We complain about not having a dishwasher turned on for a few hours but this is an existential threat we're facing as a species.

The government has no energy policy and no climate policy.

MORE: https://t.co/Mw87DYS9Hk #SkyLiveNow pic.twitter.com/Bq0xnDs50e

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) January 25, 2019

The Greens leader also said Australians experiencing power outages were being unreasonable if they complained about not being able to use home appliances.

“We have to [phase out coal] and look we talk about not using a dishwasher for a couple of hours we’re facing an existential threat as a species,” Mr Di Natale.

“Can you imagine the sacrifices that people made during war time? (And then) being told well sorry we’re not prepared to make a sacrifice that means for two hours during the day we can’t use a dishwasher.”

Senator Di Natale conceded diesel generators were necessary at the moment but said this was due to government failure to manage the transition to renewables.

“You’re never going to be able to rely on one aspect of the energy system that’s why you’ve got to address this through solar, through wind, through storage, through demand management, through things like hydro which are basically big batteries.”