Thursday, 16 October 2025

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (17:56): (2024) My matter for the adjournment tonight is for the attention of the Minister for Energy and Resources. I am sorry to say to the chamber and the community that I am very worried about the government’s offshore wind program. There are legislated targets for 2032 and 2035. The coalition, the Liberals and Nationals, have supported the government’s offshore wind push. We can see that there is an opportunity there to bring new low-emission technologies to the fore and to bring secure supplies of power into our grid.

But the government under Lily D’Ambrosio has botched the process of offshore wind. It has been hopeless. We have seen successively over recent months one group after another either pull out permanently or delay their involvement. This is because the minister was not able to get the assembly plant going, because initially the government said to the groups – the interested businesses and others who wanted to see offshore wind here – ‘Okay, well, we’ll do a process. This will be in conjunction with the federal process. There are obviously areas of state responsibility 3 miles offshore but federal beyond that. The federal government has issued a number of licences.’ A lot of these groups are now pulling back because of the uncertainty that is involved here. The state government made an extraordinary statement just a week or two ago, with Minister D’Ambrosio indicating she was kicking the state government process a year or two into the future. We cannot wait for this. The state government has really lost the plot here. If offshore wind is to make a significant contribution, the state government needs to be doing the work to make it come forward.

We did not oppose the bill – I make the point in this chamber. We had some quibbles about aspects of the bill, and we sought to amend it, but we actually did not oppose it. The problem here is that offshore wind could well make a very significant contribution, but under this government, with the regime they put in place, it is not going forward. It has stalled. The wind blades have stopped.

Georgie Crozier interjected.

David DAVIS: They are rusting. The problem here is if the state government does not act quickly, we are not going to have that additional offshore wind that we need for the 2032 and 2035 targets. That is very serious for the state. There is going to be a shortage of electricity and a shortage of support in the state. That is because Lily D’Ambrosio is incompetent and has botched the offshore wind process. What I am asking the minister to do is to go to the Premier and say we have a crisis, form a cabinet subcommittee and work out how they can fix this. They have got to fix this. The Premier will need to intervene, but the minister for energy needs to take the lead and say, ‘I’ve made mistakes. I’ve botched this’ – (Time expired)