Appropriation (Recurrent 2024-25) Bill
Extract from Hansard
[COUNCIL — Tuesday, 13 August 2024
p3576d-3599a
Hon Sophia Moermond; Hon Neil Thomson; Hon Dr Steve Thomas; Hon Nick Goiran; Hon Louise Kingston; Hon Stephen Dawson
HON DR STEVE THOMAS (South West) [2.41 pm]: Thank you, Acting President (Hon Dr Brian Walker) for the opportunity to make a few comments on the Appropriation (Recurrent 2024–25) Bill 2024 and the Appropriation (Capital 2024–25) Bill 2024. I will hopefully get to a number of areas in the extremely limited time that is available to me. I want to start with something that I consider to be incredibly urgent and worrisome. This morning the President tabled a report from the Auditor General relating to providing ministerial advice and notification. The two sides of this house have some history of disagreeing about whether the functions of the Auditor General are supported. It started with a significant and contentious debate in 2022 that I led on behalf of the opposition and which the Leader of the House led on behalf of the government. That debate questioned whether, in principle, the Auditor General would receive from the government all the information required for it to do its job. I say to all members that there was no disagreement on whether the Auditor General was an agent of the Parliament. The Auditor General answers to the Parliament. The Auditor General does not answer to the government. The Auditor General does not answer to executive government, the Premier or the Treasurer. The position, not the person, is one of the great bulwarks of the Westminster system. It is critically important that an Auditor General be able to do their job free of government interference.
A few years before the debate in 2022, I note that the Labor opposition went into the 2017 election promising a gold standard of transparency. I use those words because they are a direct quote from the then Leader of the Opposition, who became the Premier, Hon Mark McGowan. This government promised a gold standard of transparency. It is also a government that said during the debate that, in its view, the Auditor General would receive the information she needed to assure herself of the transparency and appropriateness of government expenditure. I was here for the entire debate—the first reading, all contributions to the second reading debate, the committee stage and all contributions to the third reading debate. In fact, the Leader of the House might remember—I will remind her in a minute—that I took a particularly conciliatory view of legal advice that had been commissioned by the Auditor General and received by at least one of the parliamentary committees of this Parliament, the committee that oversights the Auditor General. The government or the Leader of the House at the time had not necessarily received the committee report. At that time, I did not always agree with the legal advice that was presented on behalf of the person who gave that opinion that was sought by the Auditor General. I thought the government should have the power to do the things that it needed to do to govern. I repeatedly sought assurances from the government, through the Leader of the House, that the Auditor General would be able to access the information required to make a recommendation that things were being conducted above board. I will quote from Hansard of Tuesday, 22 November 2022. It is part of the reply to the second reading debate by the Leader of the House. The Leader of the House said —
The member — Referring to me —
referred to legal advice commissioned by the Auditor General. For the record, the Auditor General provided the government, as part of the discussions about the prospect of a bill, with a copy of legal advice that she had commissioned. That is her advice, and although I have been able to access it in my role to deal with this bill, I am not in a position to table it. The government does not have her express permission to do that. I am well aware of its contents, but I am not in a position to table legal advice sought by somebody else. The member referred to advice commissioned by the Auditor General and advised us that a committee of the Parliament deemed that to be publicly available. The government does not agree with the opinion provided to the Auditor General in that advice. I note and welcome Hon Dr Steve Thomas’s comments that he shares the view of the State Solicitor. I think the words he used were “The State Solicitor’s view on that advice is correct.”
I think that advice was correct. The essence of the debate then moved to whether, even with that advice, the Auditor General of Western Australia would be given access to the information required to determine whether expenditure was appropriate. That was the substance of the debate. There was no more important part of the debate on the Auditor General’s bill than whether the Auditor General and her officers would be given access to the level of information that was required to make an appropriate decision. There was no more important, stringent area of discussion than this one. Let me highlight this. I will quote from Hansard of the same day, Tuesday, 22 November 2022. We were in the committee stage of the bill. During debate on clause 1, I said —
Let us jump to the actions of the Auditor General Act, as it currently exists. As we have debated to date, the current Auditor General Act gives some access to cabinet-in-confidence documents with the approval of cabinet, effectively. Regardless of whether that is in the act or not, it does not matter. It is in the Cabinet handbook and it is in the State Solicitor’s advice.
That was right. The State Solicitor’s advice was that the Auditor General would have access, irrespective of the exact wording of the legislation. The Leader of the House said —
It is practice.
Again, we will find out. It has been the practice. Hansard continued —
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: Yes, it is practice. Can the minister tell us how often that seeking of information has been refused? She might have to take the question on notice. The process in the Cabinet handbook—my copy has been taken off to Hansard—is that the Auditor General seeks documents from the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, the request goes to cabinet for a discussion and a decision is made and the appropriate officers appointed by the Auditor General are contacted about viewing those documents. At this point, they cannot take copies but they can view and take notes. How often has one of those requests been refused?
The Leader of the House replied —
Bear in mind that I served as a minister in 2007 and 2008. I cannot recall what happened back then. I have also served as a minister since 2017. During my time as a member of cabinet, I do not recall us ever refusing to provide material that was requested. I am advised by my adviser from the Department of the Premier and Cabinet that as far at their records indicate, cabinet has never refused to provide material sought by the Auditor General. I can absolutely clarify that that is in relation to cabinet material.
I replied —
Thank you. We might come back to other materials in a minute but I am happy to do it a bit at a time. That is really interesting because I expected the answer would be a very small number of documents, if any at all and I think that is the case. That relates to the discussion about whether there is adequate access to these documents under the current regime or whether the changes proposed in the bill will make it more plain—more black and white—that the access is actual rather than implicit. That being the case, if cabinet-in-confidence has not been used to refuse access, would it be reasonable to say that these things have, to date, effectively been done by negotiation between cabinet and the Auditor General? I might start with that before we progress down this line.
The Leader of the House replied —
Yes, I think it is accurate to say that it is by negotiation. It is also right to say that cabinet material is currently provided, pursuant to protocols and as set out in the Cabinet handbook. Those protocols, though, do not provide a legal right. For other confidential material, what is before us now is a vast improvement on the Auditor General’s current powers—for example, having access to the government’s legal advice, which was not previously accessible, and the removal of the ability for cabinet to refuse simply because information is highly confidential. There may be other instances in which material has been provided in the absence of the power to compel it. However, that would be on a case-by-case basis and it does not change the underlying legal position that this legislation seeks to address. I think it is fair to describe the process as being one of having to negotiate the scope of what information is being sought. It certainly takes time at cabinet meetings to discuss this. Removing the reliance on a protocol and instead referring on a mandated right to access will be far more efficient and will settle the question of whether members of cabinet can argue about whether something should be released. That argument will not happen.
I could consistently read the rest of that debate for the next 45 minutes, but I think my point is fairly and reasonably made. There are other sections that also deal with commercial-in-confidence, all of which was responded to by the Leader of the House on behalf of the government to suggest that legislating access to information would now be entrenched and enshrined in legislation and that the Auditor General would no longer have to go cap in hand asking for information. In what must be one of the most massive repudiations of a government statement I have seen in my now close to 20 years around Parliament, the Auditor General today tabled a report. For the convenience of members, it is the twenty-third report of 2023–24, dated 27 June 2024 and is titled Opinion on ministerial notification: Legal services provided to State Solicitor’s Office. I will read some of this in. It was tabled today, and I think it is highly explanatory.
The first three or four paragraphs I will read are from the Auditor General’s overview on page 5. It states —
In this report I have had to issue two disclaimers of opinion in relation to the Attorney General’s decisions not to release information about the agreement between the State Solicitor and a legal firm providing advice on Griffin Coal, and the invoices provided to the State by that firm. The Attorney General declined to provide the information to Parliament on the basis that the information is covered by legal professional privilege … That is also the reason that my staff were not provided with any information to allow them to verify the Attorney General’s decision, and why I have had to issue disclaimers.
While it is disappointing to have to issue disclaimers due to a lack of evidence, in this instance I am also concerned about possible implications for my financial audits. Access to invoices and contracts to verify information in financial statements is a necessary and routine requirement for my financial audit work. If restricting access to that information based on claims of LPP extends into financial audits, it would undermine my ability to provide unmodified opinions on individual agency financial statements and even the Annual Report on State Finances, which are core parts of my legislative duties to Parliament.
The other opinion in this report is that the Attorney General’s decision not to provide information on the amount of money paid to the legal advisers on the basis of commercial confidentiality was not reasonable and therefore not appropriate. The initial response to our request for further explanation was that the information would not be released because it is commercial-in-confidence. In the end we received very limited information.
Two issues that arise from this process need to be highlighted. First, commercial confidentiality is not a reason to prevent me and my staff from accessing information. Access by my auditors does not equal public disclosure. In this statutory ministerial notification process, we act as the check for the Parliament on the validity of ministers’ claims around reasons for not providing information; we do not publish the information we access. Second, not providing a detailed explanation of why the material is commercially sensitive makes it very difficult for me to assess whether the Attorney General in this instance made a decision based on valid concerns around the State’s commercial interests.
If I could summarise that into something that the layperson might understand in a fairly easy manner, the Auditor General is effectively saying that this government is not giving the Auditor General’s office the information that it requires to do its job. This government is hiding behind legal professional privilege, commercial-in-confidence and anything else it can hide behind in order for its secrets and its embarrassment to remain behind closed doors. I understand that the government is embarrassed by its performance on Griffin Coal. I fully understand that. It is an embarrassing performance. It is not entirely the fault of the government that we find ourselves in the circumstances in the coalfields that we do. There is a long history to this that goes back to before the current government. There is plenty of blame to be shared around. But I will tell members what, I find it astounding that I am reading a report saying that that information is not going to be provided and made available after the debate we had saying that the Auditor General needs the information to be able to deliver a proper opinion—not to release the information but for it to be made available to the Auditor General’s office. I am not sure what the government considers that to be. It is certainly not gold-standard transparency. Dare I describe it as coal-standard transparency. It might be gas-standard transparency or hot-air standard transparency. There is no transparency at all. It is embarrassing.
I will refer to some of the basics of this report in case members are interested. They can read it for themselves. Page 7 contains the background to the questions I asked on the work of Ashurst, a legal firm, that has a contract with the State Solicitor’s Office. The answer we got back, effectively, was that the government refused to tell us how much it is spending, but that it has employed 18 lawyers. I do not know how many times members have had to employ a lawyer. I had to employ a lawyer to argue with the Australian Taxation Office about a year ago about whether members of Parliament are allowed to advertise. Members will be very pleased to know, as I have said previously, that I won that argument. Having beaten the tax office three times out of three cases over the last seven years, I am getting mighty sick of it. I can tell members that employing one lawyer is a fairly expensive exercise. Employing 18 of them must be interesting. The government is employing 18 lawyers. The questions that I asked on 19 October 2023 and 15 November 2023 were not answered. For those questions, the Auditor General placed a disclaimer. That disclaimer effectively says that the Auditor General cannot give an opinion on whether the answer to not provide that information is reasonable. The Auditor General stated —
… the Attorney General’s Office declined to provide us with any information relating to the questions and answers as it asserted that the information is subject to legal professional privilege. Without accessing this documentation, we cannot assess the Attorney General’s rationale for not disclosing the information. In this instance, we cannot assess whether the Attorney General’s decisions not to answer the questions were reasonable and therefore appropriate. This is the second occasion in recent times that we have been refused permission to access legal advice.
This is a trend. This is not a one-off; this is a trend. The next part of the report is headed “The Attorney General’s decisions not to provide information about the money paid to Ashurst were not reasonable and therefore not appropriate”. First of all, what was going on? What was the relationship with Ashurst, what do the contracts look like, and what is the government using them for? The Auditor General states that the Attorney General refused to provide any information about what was going on: “We’re not going to tell you.” All right. The Auditor General looked at that and said, “Well, if you tell us, we’ll assess whether not telling the Parliament and therefore the public is a reasonable thing.” The most unreliable of Attorneys General obviously sought advice and was determined to say, “We’re not going to give that to the Auditor General.” The Auditor General has been refused that information, and is thus unable to make a decision.
The second part is about how much money was paid, and this is the Auditor General’s opinion, on page 9 of the report —
The decisions by the Attorney General not to provide information to Parliament about the money paid from SSO to Ashurst in relation to Parliamentary Questions Without Notice no. 1301(4) (part 1) and 107(1), were not reasonable and therefore not appropriate.
We found that the Attorney General could have disclosed the information without disclosing the nature of the advice provided and, consequently, damaging the State’s commercial position.
As I have said repeatedly, I agree with many of the things that came from the State Solicitor’s Office in relation to the opinions sought by the Auditor General. I also agree with the position of the Auditor General. It was quite reasonable for the Auditor General to be given a look at the contracts between the State Solicitor’s Office and Ashurst to determine whether any of that information could be made public. It was quite reasonable for all that information to be provided to the Auditor General, because none of it would have become public. It was beyond reasonable for the Office of the Auditor General to be provided with the cost of the contract. How on earth could the cost of the contract be considered outside the interest of this Parliament or the people of Western Australia?
It is not about what the government has decided to do—which, by the way, is an embarrassment I will not have time to get to today, so I will have to save it for another time; the embarrassment of the government’s handling of Griffin Coal and Bluewaters power station et cetera we will get to in some other debate. But what is the cost? It is the same as the government refusing to tell us the cost of importing 103 000 tonnes of coal from Newcastle, bringing it all the way to the coalmining hub of Collie and dumping it there, and still having coal in the pile because it does not blend very well with Collie coal and it cannot all be used. I would have thought it would be pretty hard to be more embarrassing than that—taking coal from Newcastle to Collie! During the estimates hearings, Synergy admitted that that coal was, at best, the same quality as Collie coal and, for the most part, lower quality. The government brought in lower quality coal at a cost of anywhere between $50 million to $100 million, at $500-plus per tonne, when it paid only $50 per tonne for coal from Griffin. That is at least 10 times the price—maybe 20.
Why can that not be made public? It cannot be made public because the government does not want to embarrass itself. The government’s argument is that it may want to buy coal in the future, and that therefore it would impact on the price. I am not surprised. Last time around, the government had to admit that it had spent $500 to $1 000 a tonne for coal that would have cost $50 a tonne from Griffin; the next people might have their hand out as well, so I kind of get that, but it is predicated on the fact that the government might want to import another 100 000 tonnes of coal. Surely the government was so embarrassed by the first attempt that it would be mad to go back a second time. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different response, so surely that throws out the government’s defence.
This is worse. The Auditor General, an independent officer of Parliament, has been denied access to the basics that would enable her to make a decision and report to the Parliament. The Auditor General cannot even examine the cost of the contract, so she cannot provide any advice to this Parliament; she is incapable of doing her job. The government sat there during debate on the Auditor General bill and said, “As far as we’re aware, the Auditor General will have greater access to material because it will be legislated access rather than an administrative arrangement.” This is a milestone moment in this government’s lack of clarity, accountability and transparency.
I commend the Auditor General’s Legal services provided to the State Solicitor’s Office report to all members, if they have a bent for such things. I think the Office of the Auditor General will be in tomorrow to provide briefings on it, although members probably do not need that, now that they have had a run-through on it. I imagine government members will be nowhere near that room, because the embarrassment will be above and beyond their capacity to absorb, although their absorption of embarrassment seems to be fairly powerful. Maybe that is their secret strength.
I am astounded. This report should raise concerns across Parliament, the media and the public sector. This report states that the Auditor General was denied access to the information she needed to make a simple determination as to whether government actions were appropriate, yet that has not been screaming from the headlines. Maybe that is a reflection of the cynicism of the media these days; it is a bit too technical, and I know the media does not like technical issues that much. However, it would be hard to think of a more important issue for this Parliament to concern itself with than deliberate obfuscation over information needed by the Auditor General to do the basics of her job. I do not think we would find a better example anywhere of such an appalling lack of transparency. I fall short of suggesting that the house was misled during the debate because that would be unparliamentary and the Acting President (Hon Dr Brian Walker) would have to call me to order; but, like Tony Abbott, sometimes it is worth the risk. However, tempted as I am, I will let that pass.
That gives me 18 and a half minutes to talk about the rest of the things I want to discuss today. I miss the days of longer contributions, but we will come back to that.
An opposition member: You could seek an extension.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: I could seek an extension; that is very true!
Let us talk about some of the other things around the budget. There is no doubt that there are a number of critical budget issues that the government does not want to discuss. One of those is the capital works budget. I admit that I miss the days of being in this chamber with Hon Alannah MacTiernan and Hon Aaron Stonehouse, because some of those debates were quite good fun. We got into the realm of economic theory. Members who were here when they were here will remember debates around whether members followed the economic theories of Friedman or Keynes. Those issues still apply.
I still attend a number of economic fora, being something of a tragic for that. I got the opportunity last week to ask an economist—in this case, someone from the Australian National University—whether Friedman or Keynesian economics were both dead now, and, as we move into modern monetary theory with every government too big to fail, if we could make our own economic rules up as we go. Universally, I get two answers. One is from the conservative side: no. Everybody else generally answers, “We have got no idea.” We are operating in the madness of modern monetary theory, but the experts all either agree that it is going to reverse at some point or that they have no idea where this will finish. I think that is very interesting.
Let us look briefly at what Keynes actually said. Keynes was considered to be an arch-leftie by many, particularly those in the Friedman group. I put myself in the Friedman group, in case we get there. Keynes actually viewed that the economy was best served when governments stepped up in times of low economic activity, particularly in recessions, and expended on services and capital as the private sector withdrew, because the economy was tight. Then, as the economy started to boost, that the government should step back. That is the time at which the government should step out of the way and let industry step forward. That is the point at which the government starts to pay back the debt that it generally accumulated during the lesser economic times for the private sector. In low economic times, the government does not make as much money. Therefore, it has to borrow and fund those activities it uses to prop up the economy through debt.
That is Keynesian economics. To be honest, it is not terrible. It is not a communist state; it is actually a relatively sensible economic principle. The problem, of course, is that the political and economic cycles do not generally coordinate particularly well. What have we done in recent years? We have seen the government cut back on spending when it does not have a lot of money at the same time as business, because business is not providing government with that money, and we start to look at recession. Then, when business is doing really well and the government is suddenly making money, everybody tries to compete. How do we know that? It is very simple; we look at the budget papers.
When this government came to power before the boom that started in February 2019—which is now five and a half years old—the iron ore price was much lower. I remember the question: what is it going to do to the budget if it gets over $US90 a tonne? “Oh, ho, ho!”, says the Premier, “An iron ore price over $US90 a tonne is highly unrealistic.” It has been there almost the whole time since. What happened? Previously, there was a total iron ore royalty income of about $6 billion. Once the boom hit, the total iron ore royalty income was about $12 billion. What did the budget surplus hit in the interim? It hit $6 billion. I think even members opposite, if they have both hands open and are not on their phones, can do that on their fingers—just about. A couple of them might have to take one shoe off; they have to get to 12. It is $12 billion minus $6 billion. The budget surplus was at $6 billion. Iron ore prices are heading back towards $US100 a tonne. Most people are predicting it is going to go back before it is normal.
If there was ever an argument for a Keynesian economic theory, it would be when a government is doing that well. It has had $6 billion surpluses year in, year out. At that point, the obvious thing for a Keynesian economist would be to go “Right. Obviously, the economy is booming. The resources sector is booming. The iron ore price is through the roof. What is going to happen here, if we are Keynesians, is we now have to cut back our expenditure and let the private sector pick up, because it is going to need the workforce, materials and all of those things.” Is that what happened? The government said “Here’s our opportunity; we are going to try to cement ourselves in for as long as possible. We will never have a better chance to put our Metronet grand design out there and fund it as quickly as possible. We are going to go hammer and tongs.”
There are a couple of key issues, Acting President. I wish we had the time to go through this in some detail. I just want to say a couple of things. In 2021—I remember the Chamber of Minerals and Energy press release—parts of the mining sector told the government that it would need 40 000 new workers to meet its expansion needs, which was tens of millions of dollars’ worth of construction. Bear in mind, 2021 was 18 months after the start of the boom. Everybody was jumping on board and gas and iron ore were doing well—at that point, even the critical minerals were doing well. They are all subject to international prices. At that particular time, the mining sector needed that. It was trying to get out with 40 000 workers for another $10 billion a year in infrastructure build. At the same time, the state government effectively doubled its own infrastructure build. Previously, government after government, year after year, it got to a peak of $7 billion worth of infrastructure build. That is the long-term average. The long-term average for the iron ore price was about $US77 a tonne. The long-term average was $5 to $7 billion. What is the government trying to put out in the current budget? It is trying to put out $12 billion worth of infrastructure.
The mining sector told the government it was trying to get $10 billion worth of infrastructure out. The government doubled its own infrastructure build at the expense of every person trying to build a house. Of course, government projects are generally very expensive and not the most cost efficient; everybody is getting paid pretty well. Mining projects are not the most efficient and everybody is probably being paid even better than government projects— maybe not by much. Who is at the bottom of the pile? The normal construction sector. Those people are left. They could not get a job in the mining sector or on a government project. They are trying to compete for workers and materials with a government with a money bin it cannot control—the money bin is overflowing, and the gold is running out the top—and a mining sector that is trying to take advantage of this massive boom and is also trying to get its infrastructure in place.
Funnily enough, we have seen some mining sector hiccups in recent times. It may just be possible that if the mining sector was not deliberately competing to pay the most money for everything—materials and labour—with the government, which is determined to get its projects in place and at least partially open by the 2025 March state election, there would have been an orderly process to put this in place. There would not be what we currently have: massive competition. It is everywhere. I will be asking some questions in a few weeks; here is a bit of a heads-up for warning. There are a lot of government trading enterprises that cannot make their budgets balance in terms of infrastructure investment. They cannot do it, because they are competing with everybody else. They are competing with people who are trying to build Metronet, who are competing with people trying to build houses, who are competing with the mining sector, which is also trying to get ahead. All those people are massive competition. That drives up the cost of construction, inflation and the cost of living and it drives young people out of housing.
I know it is politically unpopular. Funnily enough, I will probably spend a bit of the next six months before the election saying that not everything that goes wrong is the government’s fault, because not everything is. The price of lithium has plummeted. It is a third of what it was. It is based on international prices and policy, particularly that which comes out of China. I have been around the lithium industry for decades. It is highly volatile and has always been highly volatile. Generally speaking, I know we talk about the price of iron ore being volatile, and it is, but I tell you what, lithium is worse. You know what else is worse? Funnily enough, alumina prices are also highly volatile. This is a volatile industry. Do not worry, I have said so publicly. Albemarle put unit 2 into care and maintenance and announced it was not going ahead with 3 and 4, which I always said was likely to happen, because of that price volatility. Unit 2 can be re-established when the price goes up to make it economically viable. It will take some time. Chinese policy around this will take some time to get passed. It is not a simple argument, and it never has been, so I will not blame the government for that. However, the direct competition with his government and its political benefit by overheating the construction market and taking people away from both the mining sector and general construction sector is something for which this government is directly responsible. It is the one issue about which we can say that this government put its benefit directly ahead of the benefit of many people in this state—not all the people, though.
People cannot get workers in much of the construction industry, and it is taking up to two years to build a house when it should take 10 months because no-one can get contractors or materials. If one is a current home owner, their price keeps going up. That is a fairly simple supply versus demand issue. The price keeps going up partly because people cannot get in and purchase a competitively priced new build. That is even before we get to the argument about state and federal building stimulus packages, which drove up housing prices probably at least to the level of state and federal stimulus packages. Therefore, the $70 000 that people might get to stimulate them to engage with the construction sector was nicely eaten up by the $75 000 increase in the price of the house that they were trying to purchase. Was that good economic theory? Well, we are all a bit sensitive about having that debate, but I can tell members that it will be had in the fullness of time. This government has a problem. It has put its political outcomes ahead of good economic theory and the needs and benefits of many people in the state.
I was hoping to get to a whole pile of other things, but I will not get anywhere near them in five minutes. I will have a quick chat about some of the energy issues in this state. I thought this was hilarious. This is more funny than it is diabolical, but we will need a good laugh every now and again, so here we go. I noticed a state government press release about energy that was titled “Findings shared from Australia’s first hydrogen microgrid”. This was the Denham renewable hydrogen microgrid that was put in place by Horizon Power, which is the part of the state that covers the non-grid section of the south west interconnected system. The press release had almost nothing in there apart from the fact that the government released the results, but one had to go to Horizon Power’s website to actually find the results. On the website—I do not know whether it is still there because the government is probably a bit embarrassed because I have spoken about this issue in a few different debates—there was a lovely little chart of the Denham hydrogen demonstration plant.
About the basics, let me say this. The chart has a 704-kilowatt solar farm, and over the time of the trial it generated 420 991 kilowatt hours of energy. Of that, 41 487 kilowatt hours were put straight into the local grid, which is about 10 per cent. With, presumably, the remainder, 48 500 litres of water was used to generate 1 422 kilograms of hydrogen and put through an electrolyser and into a fuel cell. That fuel cell was then used to return 16 044 kilowatt hours of energy to the grid. Let me just get this straight. There were 421 000 kilowatt hours generated; 41 500 kilowatt hours went straight into the grid, which is at least 380 000 kilowatt hours of energy; and they generated 1 422 kilograms of hydrogen and put 16 044 kilowatt hours of energy into the grid. That is 380 000 kilowatt hours of energy generated to put 16 000 kilowatt hours back into the grid, which is a return of about four per cent. I thought this was hilarious. I will not blame the government for testing the technology. Why would it not? The government put a few million dollars into it. Not every post is a winner. I can tell members that $5.7 million came from the state government. Not every racehorse wins the Melbourne Cup. That is an argument I had once with Hon Alannah MacTiernan—we do not catch a fish every time we go fishing. Sometimes we do not catch anything. Sometimes what we do catch, we cannot eat—norwest blowies, in particular. But surely, the government’s press release would say, “We tried it, but it didn’t work. We’ll just put the results out there.”
Surely, when the shadow Minister for Energy says, “That’s not a very good result, is it?, the government would say, “It didn’t work very well. We gave it a try. We like hydrogen energy, and we thought it was worth a shot.” Seriously, it was a four per cent return. We understand that green hydrogen has a problem with its economics. It might surprise members to know that I have an economic bent. Green hydrogen has a problem with economics, and we all acknowledge that now. There have been some quite famous examples of stepping well back from the green hydrogen argument, but surely the state would simply go, “No, it didn’t work. Four per cent return. Do you know what? If it comes to that, we’ll build batteries instead.” We might as well take the 420 000 kilowatt hours of energy, put the 42 000 kilowatt hours, or 10 per cent, that is required straight into the grid and store the other 90 per cent in batteries because in the long term that will be cheaper. Occasionally we get to go, “Actually, it didn’t work.” I am not even sure I can blame government members for the initiative. It spent $5.7 million when the government had a $6 billion surplus. I am not grizzling about that, but holy mackerel, can we just get a bit of honesty and transparency in the argument? It did not quite work.
I will finish on this point. Nuclear energy in Western Australia may be unlikely, but I am in lockstep with the federal shadow Minister for Energy, Ted O’Brien, when he says that we should look at it and discuss whether it might work. I am more than happy to have the discussion. I have publicly and repeatedly said that the business case has to stack up, but I am not afraid of the discussion. The nuclear component of the state Liberal energy policy was co-written with his office. Let us have a discussion that is not based on unfair or ridiculous comments.
