Turnbull’s hot air over wind power

MALCOLM Turnbull will make it into South Australia today after four days of an archly political campaign to put renewable energy in the dock for that storm-belted state’s blackout.

And just in time.

The Prime Minister was a prominent presence in the energy security debate last week but not in the disaster area itself, and it was starting to be noticed.

A satirical Twitter account last night claimed the closest Mr Turnbull had been to a storm was watching the NRL grand final.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten also will arrive in a separate trip today.

Both will visit victims of devastating, continuing flooding, which came with the huge winds and rain.

They will thank and congratulate the emergency workers, who have been on constant duty.

Those workers would not have wanted to have to escort a Prime Minister during the peak of the inundation so there are sensible reasons for a delay in Mr Turnbull’s appearance.

But his absence highlighted the perception his chief objective of the past four days has been to blame renewable energy for the blackout. From his first comments on the disaster, he prosecuted wind farms and solar power as the villains.

It was a politically opportunistic and quite false. The high winds knocked over transmission towers and this short-circuited a link to power from Victoria.

As former environment minister Greg Hunt says in an Australian Financial Review article today, it was a “weather event” and an issue with “interconnectors”. And as current Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has been saying for four days, renewables were not to blame.

But somehow, in the Prime Minister’s public musings, the impression was it could all be explained by the fact South Australia had 41 per cent renewable energy output.

In his first comments, Mr Turnbull praised emergency workers but appeared to have little sympathy for the casualties of the power failure. The priority was the political attack.

On Thursday morning, Mr Turnbull, speaking to reporters, sprinted through the “immediate cause” of the blackout — “an extreme weather event that damaged a number of transmission line assets, knocking over towers and lines”.

He then saluted emergency workers, before abruptly getting to his priority with the words, “Now, turning to the issue of renewables …”

“There is no doubt that a heavy reliance on intermittent renewables — by which in South Australia we’re mostly talking about wind, there’s also solar but intermittent renewables — does place very different strains and pressures on a grid, than reliance on traditional base load power, whether it is fossil fuel or of course hydro, which of course as long as the water is in the dam is very reliable as well,” Mr Turnbull said.

“So these intermittent renewables do pose real challenges.”

This was applauded by politicians ranging from Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts.

However, it had nothing to do with the blackout. It was the type of self-inflicted political wounding Mr Turnbull is good at.

The people of South Australia and elsewhere wanted his views on the disaster. The Prime Minister all but ignored them and gruffly changed the subject to an unrelated debate on energy not produced by coal or gas.

To understand how absurd the Turnbull Government’s response has been, look at it in these terms.

You are on a pleasant, routine drive when suddenly, in a once-in-a-lifetime event, all four wheels of your car fall off.

Mr Turnbull hears about it and instead of offering sympathy he scolds you for your choice between diesel and petrol. Motorists had to make a more realistic fuel selection, he hurrumphs, and he will call meetings to demand it.

When you eventually get a chance, you point out the wheels would have come off had your car been powered by a thermonuclear reactor or harnessed whippets, and you establish the engine is still pumping out power but it has nowhere to go because the wheels have been disconnected.

Mr Turnbull ignores you. He has political priorities directed elsewhere, somewhere beyond the actual cause of your disaster. He offers no sympathy for you or your stranded passengers.

And his strategy is as clunky as your wheelless car.

Originally published as Turnbull’s big fail on SA disaster