LEON BYNER:
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called in. Prime Minister, the other day you gave a speech to the Press Club saying that electricity was a very urgent matter. It is. Are you surprised to hear what happened yesterday in this state?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I’m very disappointed and I sympathise with the South Australian families that went without electricity in that heat. It must’ve been dreadful. Older people, mums and dads and little babies. It is shocking to think that you would lose power in 41 degrees in modern Australia.
Now the fact of the matter is Leon, that the Labor Government in South Australia has pursued a totally ideological drive to more and more renewables. They have done so without any planning. They have not put in place the back-up power you need for renewables. They haven’t put in place the storage that can contribute to it. They have literally walked, mindlessly, into this disastrous situation where a state that is crying out for investment and industry has the least reliable and the most expensive electricity in Australia to the point where we are spending $20 million on additional back-up generators for the shipbuilding project programme at Osborne.
Now there you are - we’re putting the biggest shipbuilding industry, the biggest shipbuilding program, the most advanced manufacturing in Australia, in our peacetime history, there in South Australia and we’re having to spend $20 million on back-up generators, because the State Government can’t keep the lights on. It’s a disgrace.
LEON BYNER:
Prime Minister it seems to me that the COAG market and style and operation that was set up years ago, has been an absolute abysmal failure. It is so disappointing and frankly outrageous that you’ve got a generator, but it won’t generate on the basis that it can’t make money. Power is not set up to be a futures market. It’s set up, or should be, to provide an essential service.
Now as the Prime Minister, what can you do in the short-term to try and turn this stupid monster around?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I tell you, it has taken the South Australian Government - and I know I am talking about the South Australian Government but let’s be very focused - this is a failure of leadership in South Australia. It has taken them years to get into this position and it is challenge to address it.
What we are doing is re-focusing attention on the very dangerous situation we have with the supply, with the affordability and the reliability of energy right around Australia but it is at its most acute in your state. Clearly what we need is, if you’re going to have a lot of renewables, you need to have the energy, the back-up for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
LEON BYNER:
Prime Minister, isn’t AEMO really culpable here? That they made such a decision, they could’ve called in Pelican Point, they didn’t and instead they blacked peopled out?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well AEMO will have to defend its own actions but the real question is why did we get into a situation we’re in, in South Australia? And the answer was because of this heavy reliance on wind power, recognising that - as you know, you live in South Australia Leon – that when you get these heatwaves in South Australia, the wind drops and that’s one of the reasons why it is so hot. And so you had all of that wind power generating 2.5 per cent of the state’s energy. So the wind power fell away right at the point when you needed more energy than ever. And what South Australia has done through this Left ideological approach to energy is close down coal-fired power stations like the Northern power station, the Pelican Point gas-fired plant does not operate in the way it should and when it should and what is South Australia doing for all of this green ideology, it relies on brown coal energy from Victoria which is the most emissions intensive in Australia. This an absurd result. For South Australia, it is a tragedy.
LEON BYNER:
Well the Government say: ‘Well if the Liberals don’t like this, why do they subsidise renewables?’
PRIME MINISTER:
We have a renewable energy target that is responsible, it is legislated. The problem is, that we’ve got, is that the state governments, Labor Governments are pursuing even higher targets. I mean in South Australia, in 2014, the State Government set a new target of 50 per cent by 2025. So what Jay Weatherill and Mr Koutsantonis are seeking to do is increase the vulnerability of South Australians to incidents like this. They are actually, actively undermining the security and affordability of your electricity in South Australia. And the consequence, despite their denials – utterly unconvincing denials – the consequences are being seen again and again.
LEON BYNER:
Prime Minister are you considering, or would you consider, bankrolling, with other investors in the international market, particularly in Asia, a clean coal power station?
PRIME MINISTER:
The answer to that is we would certainly consider it. Indeed, back in 2009, when I was Leader of the Opposition, I said that I thought that it was important that we, as the largest coal-exporting nation in the world, we have more of a vested interest than anyone to demonstrate that coal, modern coal-fired plants, clean coal, or much cleaner coal plants, have a future in a lower emissions world. And they clearly do, because they’re being built elsewhere in the world.
But you know, the consequence is you’ve got to live with the consequence of your actions. If you decide, as South Australian Labor has done, to have more and more renewables but ignore the fact that the wind doesn’t blow all the time, and the sun doesn’t shine all the time.
That’s why the other part of my speech which was very important, was to say that we must do more for energy storage. There are sites that I’ve examined in South Australia for example, where you can have what’s called pumped hydro. Which is where you use energy when it’s plentiful, typically at night, and it’s cheap and you literally pump the water up into a reservoir then when there’s high demand, it flows downhill.
We only have three pumped hydro storage facilities in Australia, only two of any scale. The biggest in the Snowy, another one at Shoalhaven and the smaller one in Queensland.
97 per cent of the world’s energy storage is stored in pumped hydro. There’s a lot of potential for it and I’ve got ARENA, the renewable energy agency, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, on the case. They are calling for interest in this because this is something we’ve got to get onto. If you believe we should have more renewables, fine, then you’ve got to have more storage. You’ve either got to have more storage, or you’ve got to have more backup power. The idea that you can power a state or a nation solely from renewables, is fanciful. You need to have that backup.
This is the problem Leon, that the Labor Party is captured by a left ideology. Seriously, I regard this in a completely non-ideological way. My concern is to ensure Australians have reliable, affordable energy and that we meet our international obligations. We should use every technology. Our approach to energy should be ‘all-of-the-above’. But you’ve got to plan it and you’ve got to have the backup.
LEON BYNER:
So as the Prime Minister, when can South Australia expect some action on this, do you think?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well in terms of storage, we’re looking at one project, there’s one project that’s been presented to us that I think has considerable potential. But really what we need to do is get concerted action. But the challenge of course is the utter failure of leadership at the state level. You’ve got to remember the Federal Government is obviously part of the COAG Energy Council, but the state governments have the hands-on - in many cases they own the assets of course – and they directly regulate them.
So this is above all an issue for the states.
Now the road ahead, the roadmap is very clear. If you want to have a lot of renewables, look, the price of renewables has been coming down, the efficiency of solar has been increasing exponentially. All of that is terrific, I welcome it. But the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. You’ve got to plan for it.
LEON BYNER:
What would you suggest that Mr Weatherill and Mr Koutsantonis do now? Right now?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they’ve certainly got to make sure that the plant that they’ve actually got, that is available and in operation, the Pelican Point plant, they should make sure that in circumstances like this it is there to provide the backup.
Now, as you probably know there are a number of generators that failed during this heat wave. This is one of the challenges, electrical equipment often fails during heatwaves, of course. When I say often, it does from time to time. There were failures in the system during the heatwave and that is why you’ve got to have plenty of backup, plenty of resilience, but you’ve got to do it a smart way Leon. Because if you gold-plate everything, you can end up having very expensive electricity. This is the other part of this, this has got to be planned very carefully in a very businesslike way and you’ve got to strip the ideology and the politics out of it.
LEON BYNER:
Prime Minister, before I let you go, you’ve just introduced into the Parliament some regulations and laws on restricting entitlements. Tell us what you’ve got on your mind.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the first thing we’re doing, as you know, we’re abolishing the so-called Life Gold Pass, which is where former members of parliament and former ministers who served for particular periods, were able to get continued free travel around Australia. This is the so-called gold pass. So we are abolishing, in the process of abolishing that. That’s one step that I’ve taken, it’s been talked about for a long time. My Government is abolishing the Life Gold Pass.
In terms of the management of politicians’ travel expenses, I’m setting up – in fact I’ve already set up today – an Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority. I’ve set up the transitional executive agency. There will be legislation I’ve introduced into the House which will set up the permanent body, which will be independent and it will monitor, it will account for and report on the way in which politicians spend our, all of our, taxpayers’ money on their travel expenses. Because it’s other people’s money, and we should spend it as frugally if not more frugally than we spend our own.
LEON BYNER:
Mr Turnbull, I won’t call you Trunbull, because -
[Laughter]
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
LEON BYNER:
Did you actually send a note to Mr Spicer about the fact that your name is Turnbull?
[Laughter]
PRIME MINISTER:
Well of course not. But you know, I think there’s actually - if you go into the history - there’s quite a long tradition of White House spokesmen mangling the names of foreign leaders.
[Laughter]
But anyway, the most important thing is we got the right outcome. As I said, the commitment the President gave, I’ve thanked him for.
LEON BYNER:
Alright. Thanks for calling in on this and any time you’ve got a solution for SA, because we just had one of the most prominent business people calling in, we had Roger Drake on yesterday. They’re buying generators. It is hitting their bottom line.
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, it’s shocking.
LEON BYNER:
Yeah.
PRIME MINISTER:
Leon, when I was in Port Lincoln the other day with Rowan Ramsay, you’ve got people there, businesses there saying: ‘This is like a third world country, where you’ve got to spend millions of dollars on backup generators because you can’t rely on the electricity.
You know, Koutsantonis and Weatherill can point the finger at everyone they like but South Australians know it’s their responsibility. The fundamental responsibility of a state government is to keep the lights on. And they fail again and again.
LEON BYNER:
Prime Minister, thanks for joining us.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks a lot.
[ENDS]