WA Liberal Leader and Shadow Energy Minister, David Honey MLA, has said that Energy Minister Bill Johnston’s ‘Summer Readiness’ campaign is a clear admission from the McGowan Government that they have failed to prepare Western Australia’s power network for the coming summer.
“I don’t object to a general call for people to save energy. However, the timing of this campaign is clearly in response to several failures in managing the electricity portfolio.
“This initiative is simply a way of handing responsibility for managing the network supply issues over to the public.
“The embarrassing reality is that the Government is clearly concerned that they will not be able to keep the lights on.
“They know that they have not done enough preparation work in the year since the mass outages last summer and are resorting to drastic measures.”
Dr Honey said there have been repeated energy bungles this year.
Not long ago, it was revealed the State Government was forced to close the Collie coal fired power stations due to a failure to rebuild coal reserves.
“The State Government’s has been unable to enforce contractual obligations with the contracted coal miner.
Dr Honey said there is much work to be done to make WA energy-secure, particularly with the coming gas shortage projected by AEMO between 2024-2027.
“With the projected gas shortage in a few years, energy prices risk going even higher under this Government.
“The Government like to boast about the management of the transition to renewables. It is clear that their mismanagement and early closure decisions are putting power reliability at greater risk during this transition process.
“I’m a strong supporter of renewables and believe WA is set to become a renewable energy powerhouse, but we are not seeing enough new projects started. Other States are well ahead of WA.
“We should not be seeing a less reliable electricity supply and Western Australians being asked to turn the air conditioning off at the hottest time of the year when it is most needed.” said Dr Honey.
