LEON BYNER: Now, we find that South Australia has the highest power prices in the world or soon will have. Now, there are a number of reasons for this. One, we sold off the industry to retire the debt from Bannon’s State Bank debacle, governments invented a complicated economic model of a grid supposed to send excess power to states who were short, governments continually under-invested in the poles and wires and transformers and so we’ve been hit with not only higher electricity prices but costly network charges which, by the way, Rod Sims at the ACCC [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] reckons is a rip off. Then, of course, there’s the green energy mandatory 20 per cent [Renewable Energy Target]. Add all this together, top it off with a carbon tax, and you have a very expensive essential service. As I said yesterday, a switch is now a status symbol. Don’t expect any government to bring prices down. In fact, in SA things may only get more expensive. Now, we still have generators using highly polluting brown coal, and the driest state… we have no opportunity whatsoever to generate hydroelectricity. We must find ways to reduce our consumption and carve every opportunity to save as we can and we’ll give you some very good advice on that this morning, but the economic theory driving the national market is flawed. Surprise, surprise! New South Wales, Queensland and WA still own their power assets. Victoria and South Australia do not, so there cannot be real competition with such a mixture of government and private assets and the current process is more likely to reward the generators than the customer that’s you and me. We have to find ways to reduce consumption and get the best possible deal and it can be done. Now, in South Australia, we don’t have a clear idea of the way in which the vast electricity consumed by the desalination plant will distort the market. Can the Government buy electricity cheaper than you and me for its desal plant? What do you think? Remember, the Government is the largest single buyer of power in a market that the Government itself created and it’s the regulator. Now, there’s a conflict of interest! …
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LEON BYNER: Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham has called in. Simon, tell us your view on this one.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well, good morning, Leon and listeners. Leon, look, there are many reasons, as the people you’re interviewing have outlined, why electricity prices are high but what is indisputable about this is that South Australia is going to go from having amongst the highest electricity prices in the world already to having the highest electricity prices in the world thanks to the carbon tax and it just shows that this is the last place in the world you would impose a carbon tax that is designed to put up electricity prices. It shows that there is already plenty of incentive for businesses and householders to try to reduce their electricity usage and that a carbon tax is just putting extra undue pressure on them that isn’t going to add any new incentive. The incentive’s already there to be efficient with energy, to be judicial with energy and to use as little as possible and have as small a carbon footprint as possible and the last point that I’d make on that is that, of course, businesses are the ones who don’t get any compensation. Small businesses get no compensation for the carbon tax and they don’t get any help in terms of electricity price subsidies or the like they simply have to pay it and it will just render South Australia as the least competitive place in the world, really, for anybody who needs to use electricity in their business.
LEON BYNER: Alright…
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