MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Simon Birmingham is a Liberal Senator for South Australia, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment. Good morning, do you concede that moving to renewable energy is the way of the future and that South Australia is setting the pace here?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Look, we obviously need to do all we can to encourage renewable energy but you have to do it sensibly. Now, it’s got to be done in a way that doesn’t spike power prices unnecessarily and what we’re seeing around Australia at present is a whole raft of different State Government policies are causing real pressures on power prices, which, when put together with Julia Gillard’s desire for a carbon price, is going to impact quite significantly on future electricity prices for consumers.
DAVID BEVAN: Is this, does this have elements of a straw man about it though because it’s not going to affect the two existing base load coal-fired, dirty coal-fired power generators …
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: There certainly seems to be a degree of Mike Rann on his way to Cancun, looking to big-note himself before global climate change talks. Patrick Conlon [Minister for Energy, Acting Premier] clearly had no detail on just what the standards would be, what level of emissions would be acceptable and in reality in South Australia at present, we do generate far more of our power from natural gas than the rest of the country … around 50 per cent for us compared to about 13 per cent for the rest of the country, whereas from coal we generate only about 35 per cent of our power compared to about 80 per cent for the rest of the country. So South Australia historically, well before Mr Rann and his Government, is leaps and bounds ahead just because of the way we set ourselves up, reliant on a cleaner fuel source of gas rather than coal.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Okay, Simon Birmingham … thank you…