It has been revealed that Alinta Energy offered to give away the Port Augusta coal-fired power station for free.

Key points: Alinta Energy approached SA Government to take ownership of coal-fired generator

Alinta Energy approached SA Government to take ownership of coal-fired generator SA Government rejected offer due to clean-up bill

SA Government rejected offer due to clean-up bill Liberals no confidence motion voted down in Parliament

The company approached the South Australian Government to take ownership of the plant under a "walk-in, walk-out" basis during negotiations in 2015, where it had also sought $25 million in subsidies to keep it running until 2018.

Alinta's offer is referred to in a letter from chief executive officer Jeff Dimery in 2015, obtained by the ABC.

Last year, the plant closed following the 2014 end to coal mining at Leigh Creek, both with the loss of hundreds of jobs.

SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said despite the apparent free deal, the Government would have taken on huge costs.

Coal was transported to the power station via train. ( ABC News: Khama Reid )

"Alinta would have walked away without having to pay any of the money for the clean-up of the mess that they had incurred and legacy liability they had taken on which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars," he said.

"So it's not free, it's actually hundreds of millions of dollars."

He said the price of taking on the plant's liabilities would not have cancelled out the impacts of job losses or the cutback of thermal, baseload power.

"We would be getting a coal mine that had no coal, to run a power station that was losing hundreds of millions of dollars," he said.

"It was a bad deal for the taxpayers and we said 'no'."

South Australian taxpayers once owned the plant, but it changed hands several times after privatisation in 1999.

Mr Koutsantonis said the circumstances would have been different had it stayed in public hands all along.

"We would have been investing in it while we owned it, we would not have been losing hundreds of millions of dollars, and we would have been running it in the interests of South Australian taxpayers," he said.

"If you take one part of the market back into government hands you have to take all of it, because when we ran ETSA, there wasn't a national electricity market and we weren't competing in a retail sense with anyone."

Liberals move a motion of no confidence

The State Opposition later moved a motion of "no confidence" in Premier Jay Weatherill over what they called a failure to provide affordable and reliable electricity after investing in wind power over the last decade or so.

Loading

The motion was a symbolic one as the Government voted it down with the support of its two independent ministers.

Opposition Leader Steven Marshall told SA Parliament the state's electricity problems were of the Government's own making.

"This Premier, this Energy Minister, have made South Australia the laughing stock of the entire nation with their failed experiment which has plunged South Australia into a competitive disadvantage with every other state in the nation," he said.

"Highest priced least reliable energy, highest unemployment."

Independent MP and Investment and Trade Minister Martin Hamilton Smith — a former Liberal leader — told Parliament Mr Marshall needed to "get with it" on the issue of power.

"The Premier and Treasurer have exposed the absolute naivety of the Leader's thinking on this matter," he said.

"The lack of business acumen, the lack of an alternative plan, the poor understanding of the energy market and the business of government — it foreshadows the mistakes those opposite would make if in government."

Mr Weatherill told Parliament the public response to his Government's $500-million energy security plan to build a storage battery with a 100 megawatt output, and a 250-megawatt gas-fired power plant was a vote of confidence.

"The reason why there is this growing sense of confidence in the South Australian community and this Government is because it has taken one of the most significant public policy issues confronting our state, something that affects the lives of every citizen, the livelihood of every business, and has seen a threat to it and has responded assertively to remedy it," he said.

Mr Marshall and four other Liberal MPs along with a Labor backbencher were later given their marching orders from the House of Assembly for interjecting.

Loading...