South Australian premier signals possible collaboration on alternative to clean energy target, and urges Turnbull to face down rightwing pressure

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, has renewed his warning that Labor-led state governments could go it alone on energy policy if the Turnbull government can’t resolve its internal battle over the clean energy target.

If we are going to do it ourselves we might as well design the best system Jay Weatherill

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Weatherill has also upped the ante by signalling the Labor states might look to collaborate on an alternative policy to the clean energy target recommended by the chief scientist if there is a better mechanism to provide certainty for investors and emissions reduction.

Asked whether he was wedded to the chief scientist’s central recommendation in the event the states decided to break away and pursue their own policy, Weatherill said: “No, not really. If we are going to do it ourselves we might as well design the best system.”

South Australia has long championed an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity sector – a form of carbon trading – but Weatherill fell into line behind Finkel’s clean energy target after the report was published in an effort to achieve national consensus.

“For the sake of argument we were prepared to compromise and move away from the emissions intensity scheme to get the clean energy target,” the premier said.

“We didn’t want to be bloody-minded about it just because it was something we had been promoting.”

But Weatherill said he was concerned the Turnbull government was now intent on watering down the Finkel mechanism to include “clean” coal in the mix, which made him less wedded to the clean energy target proposal.

The premier said it was important for the prime minister to stare down the current internal pressure to include coal in the clean energy target, because if Turnbull ceded ground on that point, it would be the first of many concessions.

“What the prime minister needs to understand is this: you can’t do business with these people,” the premier said.

“If you move away from an emissions intensity scheme to a clean energy target then they’ll want to change that to allow coal in. If you gave them that, the next question would be tear up Paris, and if [he] tore up Paris then they’d ask him to call a press conference and deny that he believes in climate change – they are insatiable.

“There is no benefit for the prime minister in trying to placate his right wing, because they are incapable of being placated.

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“So what we need to do is just get on with the business of putting in the right energy policy.”

Weatherill’s comments, in an interview with Guardian Australia’s politics live podcast, follow a decision by the Labor states and the Australian Capital Territory in July to ask the Australian Energy Markets Commission to conduct work on how they could go it alone in the event the Turnbull government dumped the clean energy target, or pursued a suboptimal policy.

The Coalition has greenlit 49 of the 50 recommendations from the Finkel review but not the clean energy target because of internal divisions.



The fight over energy policy is expected to return to the federal Coalition party room in September, once the government gets advice it has sought from the Australian Energy Market Operator about how to ensure the dispatchable power requirements of the electricity grid can be met when ageing coal-fired power stations leave the system.

Weatherill said the best outcome remained a national approach to determining climate and energy policy, but the “national interest” also demanded a solution to the problem.

The premier, who has been in the top job in the state since October 2011, is also facing a state election next March, with network reliability and high power prices a significant local issue.

Labor has been office in SA since 2002.

Weatherill said the Turnbull government’s decision to have a public spat with South Australia over its high proportion of wind energy had transformed the looming state political contest into a referendum on renewables.

“On any view of it, this next state election is going to be seen as a referendum on renewable energy, because the prime minister has conditioned the South Australian experience as being idiocy and ideology and a dangerous experiment,” the premier said.

“If we were to fail in the election it would be seen as a referendum and a cross against renewable energy.”

Weatherill said Australia’s renewable energy industry was acutely conscious that the political contest in the SA state election was high-stakes.

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“I think a lot of people in the renewable energy sector, and people more generally who want to promote policies tackling climate change, understand that. We think that will be an important fulcrum in the state election.”

Weatherill was asked whether, given the acute political sensitivity about high power prices, he felt he could prevail if the election was a referendum on the future of low-emissions energy. “Yes, absolutely, because people believe renewable energy is the future.

“They also believe, in the long term, renewables put downward pressure on prices and I think they’ve seen the early evidence of that.”