NAOMI WOODLEY: Senator Nick Xenophon says there should be a review, and the Premier has already indicated that will happen. But he says it should look at whether a different source of power, perhaps gas, would not have created the surges which led to the system shutting itself down. Is that a valid question to ask?
SENATOR PENNY WONG, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE: I saw Nick yesterday, I saw Nick jump on television in Canberra within an hour of the electricity across our state being shut down. Now we all know Nick loves publicity but yesterday he crossed the line. He crossed the line jumping on television to have a crack. To talk about hospitals shutting down was irresponsible, it was alarmist and frankly, it was tacky.
What I would say to you is this, no one who was in Adelaide at that time was thinking about politics. We were thinking about our community, we were thinking about our family, our friends and our neighbours. Thats what we were thinking about. I know Nick was in Canberra and not here and maybe didnt understand how people were feeling, but I thought it was alarmist and tacky of him.
WOODLEY: He says he was concerned because he was here in Canberra and not in South Australia and was watching it unfold from afar.
WONG: I dont think this was the time for politics, it was the time for community. And jumping on television to, frankly, say alarmist things about our hospitals was not helpful. Thats not what people wanted from their politicians and from their leaders yesterday.
WOODLEY: Theres been a debate today about South Australias 40 per cent use of renewable energy. The Prime Minister has said that state-based targets like South Australias and the ones in Victoria and Queensland are unrealistic and are driven by Ideology. Whats your response to that?
WONG: Like most Australians I think we are all waiting for Malcolm Turnbull to behave like a Prime Minister and like a leader and yet again he disappoints us.
What happened yesterday was we had an extreme weather event. We had over 80,000 lightning strikes hitting our state. We had wild weather which knocked over in excess of 22 transmission towers. Thats what happened and thats what caused the outage. To have, not just the Prime Minister, but others jumping in to play a bit of politics with this about their own views around renewable energy is disappointing.
WOODLEY: He says though that this is a wakeup call about the different targets set by different states and the fact that we need a national target and that everyone should be working towards the federal target of 23.5%.
WONG: Well what I would say to him is that weve got a lot of people in South Australia who are still without power. People in the north of our state are without power and are likely to be for some time. Power has been restored to 90% of households but there are still thousands of South Australians who havent got power. Now some of those will get power today, but weve still got a lot of people who have a couple of days likely without power.
I reckon it would be better for the Leader of the country to be focusing on what the Federal Government can do to support the State Government and others in making sure this is fixed up rather than playing politics.
While Im on air what I would say is this - the great many thanks from all of the South Australian community goes to all our emergency service workers, the police officers, ambulance, SES, fire fighters, who were out a lot yesterday. A lot of calls and they responded magnificently and we owe them a great debt of thanks.
WOODLEY: Is there not a case to have that national conversation at the same time as acknowledging that the situation in South Australia at the moment is still very fluid and very tough for a lot of people?
WONG: Well there is plenty of time in the future for us to have a conversation about what can be learnt from these events. But thats not the way in which some are approaching this. There are too many people, and the Prime Minister included who are approaching this with a desire to play a bit of politics, to push a particular agenda. Frankly I dont think here in South Australia people are going to thank them.