LABOUR ENERGY MOTION (13/4/24)
Extract from Hansard
[COUNCIL — Thursday, 14 March 2024]
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Hon Colin De Grussa; Hon Martin Aldridge; Hon Neil Thomson; Hon Louise Kingston; Hon Darren West; Hon Tjorn Sibma; Hon Steve Martin; Hon Stephen Dawson; Hon Dr Steve Thomas
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the power flicked out, which it regularly does. It is usually not for too long, but when I got up at six o’clock the next morning to jump into the shower and head back down to the Wagin Woolorama, there was still no power.
I have an instantaneous hot-water system. My options were to have a cold shower at 6.00 in the morning or to drive to another property on the farm that has a gas storage unit, so I took the drive. But the point is that Western Australians in regional parts of the state are very used to the power dropping out. It does often. Two years ago, Hon Darren West was giving people the advice that they should get a generator. Sadly, most people who live on regional properties own a generator and that is a very expensive thing to do; if they set it up next to the house and they also need to run the shearing shed that day, they probably need two generators or to move one between the two.
I congratulate Hon Colin de Grussa for moving this motion. There are serious issues, as we saw in Kalgoorlie recently. It was not only Kalgoorlie; I was getting phone calls every day from a gentleman in Narembeen whose power was out for seven, eight, nine days. The couple of hundred bucks he received was almost embarrassing. I will conclude my remarks and hand over to Hon Dr Steve Thomas.
HON STEPHEN DAWSON (Mining and Pastoral — Minister for Emergency Services) [11.21 am]: Hon Steve Martin got the wrong Steve for a moment! I am very grateful to Hon Dr Steve Thomas for allowing me to speak next. I will take only a few minutes because I appreciate it is the opposition’s time this morning. I acknowledge it is frustrating when the power goes out. That is undeniable. Particularly in regional Western Australia, power is very important for our telecommunications and entertainment systems.
As the Department of Fire and Emergency Services does from time to time, I take the opportunity to remind people in regional Australia that they should have a battery-powered AM/FM radio. Hon Darren West spoke about there being 860 000 power poles right throughout the state and, invariably, one, two or more will go out if someone crashes into them, there is a pole-top fire or whatever. It is really important at these times that people have
a battery-operated radio in their house. I did a quick google this morning and amazon.com.au has them for as little as $10. It is an important investment for people to make and I encourage all members to remind their constituents to have one of those radios available. It is not to say that it is always appropriate that the power goes out. Certainly, Western Power and the state government are making significant investment into updating our power system around the state.
Hon Martin Aldridge in his contribution referred to a letter that I got back from Telstra recently. I continually write to the federal government and indeed to Telstra, and I have done so since I took on this role in 2021. I raised it with Senator Bridget McKenzie when she was the minister. I have written to Telstra and the current feds, and I do so continually, because it is not appropriate that the telecommunication system goes out for as long as it does. In the correspondence that Hon Martin Aldridge referred to from Vicki Brady, the chief executive officer of Telstra, she spoke to the investment that Telstra, along with the commonwealth government and the state government, is making in our mobile network hardening program. I seek leave to table this document because I think it is important for everyone to see.
[Leave granted. See paper 3012.]
Hon STEPHEN DAWSON: It gives an update on some of the investments Telstra is making. I think Telstra could be doing a lot more. Hon Colin de Grussa said the state could be doing more. We are not responsible for telecommunications, but we make an investment into black spot funding and a range of other things. I continue to raise this with the federal government because it is frustrating for our constituents. I acknowledge the members who contact me, particularly Jess Shaw, MLA, following those recent outages, and Hon Steve Martin; I have spoken to Hon Martin Aldridge at times too. It is important for us all to get the message out to our constituents when the power goes out. I ask people to do two things from today: get yourself a battery-powered AM/FM radio and, for those
who have not done so, get yourself a bushfire plan, because we are seeing these things happen more frequently and they will continue as climate change becomes more of an issue.
HON DR STEVE THOMAS (South West) [11.24 am]: I am pleased to be the third member of the Steve faction to contribute this morning! I am probably not going to leave room for the fourth.
Hon Stephen Pratt: Next motion.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: He will speak on the next motion.
I want to add a few bits. We could spend a bit of time on this, but I need to correct a few things said by the parliamentary secretary. If he wants to send his speech notes over to me in advance, I am happy to correct them. Electrons in power move almost instantaneously but not simultaneously. It is not at the speed of light. It is not 300 000 kilometres a second; it is probably a couple of thousand kilometres a second. It is not quite instantaneous.
Another thing he said was that there are no small modular reactors in the world. There are plenty of small modular reactors in the world. There are no economically based small modular reactors in the world at this point. The first
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Extract from Hansard
[COUNCIL — Thursday, 14 March 2024]
p817a-829a
Hon Colin De Grussa; Hon Martin Aldridge; Hon Neil Thomson; Hon Louise Kingston; Hon Darren West; Hon Tjorn Sibma; Hon Steve Martin; Hon Stephen Dawson; Hon Dr Steve Thomas
one is being constructed. I will be interested to see what its economic viability is. It is being built in Canada. I am happy to do corrections on his speech notes if he would like to flick them over before we start next time around.
I would like to mention the discussion on privatisation because it might surprise members to know that the Labor Party has engaged in some privatisation of the energy system as well. It sold off three wind farms. I think we retained 20 per cent ownership at the time, but the wind farms at Albany, Greenough River and Warradarge were sold off to Bright Energy under the first version of this government. Before members get overly excited about the privatisation process and throw rocks at the Liberal Party —
Hon Darren West: You’re talking about generation. I’m talking about transmission.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: It is okay to privatise some bits but not other bits of the energy system. It is okay to privatise generation. We can privatise generation but we cannot privatise distribution. Oh, I see! Privatisation is okay; there are just some caveats on which bit of the energy system we are talking about! That is very interesting. The Liberal Party previously took a policy of selling 51 per cent of Western Power.
Hon Dan Caddy: You were a strong advocate for it.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: Me personally? I was not even in the system at that point. I was not a member of Parliament. I think the prices that were expected were quite interesting. But the reality is that what has happened in the meantime, of course, is the government has an asset and for seven years a Labor government has run this asset down to a point at which it is fairly difficult to sell. The Liberal Party does not have a proposal going forward to sell the poles and wires of Western Power. That was a policy at a time, but as the Labor Party well knows, after each election the policy disappears.
Hon Darren West: It wasn’t even your worst policy!
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: Let us not go down that path necessarily. But the reality is that the Labor Party has also happily engaged in privatisation. It depends on which bit it is.
One of the other things the parliamentary secretary said was that he had not heard anyone from this side thank the Western Power workers for their work, so I take the opportunity to thank the Western Power workers for all the work they do. They go out at ridiculous times of the night. People’s power goes out and they do not like it, and the Western Power workers do an incredibly good and important job. Thank you for that. It also needs to be said that if the government did a better job of maintaining the system, the Western Power workers would not have to go out quite
so often. The mere fact that we have had this run-down of assets and process makes it worse for the Western Power workers. As Hon Darren West quite rightly says, there was a time when government, for example, was doing maintenance to remove the dust and debris that accumulates at the top of poles because when we get some moisture it causes arcing across and starts pole-top fires. Maintenance used to be done on that in the metropolitan area. That is not done anymore. The government has stopped doing that and reduced the workload and the maintenance that is done. Guess what? When we get pole-top fires and the power goes out, we have to send out Western Power workers to try to fix that and make it safe. Perhaps the government needs to invest a bit more in the process.
The Kalgoorlie incident is important for one particular aspect. If there is a storm, the power will go out. That is just unfortunate. Two years earlier, we had a problem when the power went out and the backup system did not work. Two years later—this year—the power went out and the backup system did not work. Maintenance was even carried out on the backup system in the intervening year to try to improve it—the government invested in the backup system—and it still did not work. It was not fit for purpose. Of course, there was a massive issue. The failure is not that the backup system did not work but that the government knew it did not work and did not fix it. That is where the government needs to lift its game.
Motion lapsed, pursuant to standing orders.