The Failings of South Australian Governments

Introduction

One of the great failings of both levels of government is that while they officially espouse freedom of speech, in practice they try to limit it when and where it suits them. (See also Freedom of speech in the public service.)

I'd be pleased to receive suggestions for additional points for this page; Email me at daveclarkecb@yahoo.com. Also, let me know if you think I'm wrong (give me evidence).

Created 2003/06/04, modified 2011/01/04 Contact: email daveclarkecb@yahoo.com

A true, functional, democracy requires four things:

1. free and honest elections;
2. informed and active voters;
3. political candidates who declare what they intend to do when and if they are elected;
4. politicians who vigorously try to fulfil their promises.

Of course other things such as the rule of law, a judicial system, a public service and health and education systems are also required, but these are subsidiary.

SA's water problems are discussed on another page.

This was followed by the Brown and Olsen Governments; a period of selling off of assets, secret and questionable deals, broken promises, and very little imagination. John Olsen went into an election promising not to sell the Electricity Trust of SA (ETSA), and then sold it; he was finally forced to resign after misleading Parliament. (Shortly after he was given a lucrative government position as Australian High Commissioner to California by the corrupt Australian Government.) The Kerin Government didn't last long enough to make an impression.

Yet the South Australian government has never built or upgraded a major power transmission line so that renewable energy can be further developed. (They built the transmission line from Port Augusta to the Olympic Dam mine at their own cost; it seems they are happy to help the mining industry out, but not sustainable energy.)

There are a great many things that government could be doing, at little or no cost, that would make a big impact on our greenhouse gas production rates; but they continue to confine themselves to symbolic acts that are highly visible but achieve little.

Sustainable energy and the SA government

SA government sustainable energy initiatives in perspective Project MW Government Adelaide Airport PV 0.11 Goyder Pavilion PV 1.00 Wilpena PV 0.10 Commercial SA Wind farms (as of Dec. 2009) 907.00 Potential further on-shore wind developments 23 000.00 Potential off-shore wind developments Similar to on-shore The reasoning used to produce the figures on wind power potential is given in Wind Power Potential in Australia. I originally intended to place these data on a pie chart, but of course the government initiatives are so small that they would be invisible. Adelaide Airport (top) and showground solar installations Image credit, SA Dept. Climate Change Note that the panels are horizontal. If they were sloping at 30° toward the north they would produce sustantially more electricity. Had they been installed outside of Adelaide they could generate more power for the same investment; but they would not have the same impact on the voters. Is this tax-payer's money well spent? See main text.

The government's initiatives are tiny, as can be seen in the table at the right. They are designed for media attention and popular appeal and are trivial in scale compared to what industry is doing and could be doing if given real support from government.

The South Australian government has apparently commendable targets of 20% sustainable electricity by 2014 and 33% by 2020. As I understand it these are no more than aims, there is no commitment, no legal need for the goals to be achieved; they are only 'aspirational targets'. (I have attempted to confirm this by downloading the actual legislation. I was unable to do so because of some apparent fault in the government Internet site. I informed the Premier's department of this problem and got no response.)

The District Council of Yorke Peninsula approved an extension to the Wattle Point wind farm about 2005. Construction couldn't proceed because the State Government would not fund the needed upgrade to the power transmission lines. In fact the lack of transmission lines is one of the greatest limitations to the growth of sustainable energy infrastructure in South Australia.

Trust Power stated that development of the Snowtown wind farm had been delayed because of tough licensing rules brought in by the SA government.

South Australia has more wind energy and wind energy potential than any other eastern Australian state, but this is no thanks to the SA government, it is purely because SA is well suited to wind power. In fact, as mentioned above, the government has made it more difficult for wind farm operators to set up in SA.

Ironically, much of SA's wind power development would not have happened had the big coal-fired power station at Port Augusta not have already been built. It just happens that the high-capacity power lines from Port Augusta to Adelaide pass through the Mid-North where there is a top-quality wind resource (the Hallett, Clements Gap, Snowtown and Waterloo wind farms).

In its Strategic Plan, released in January 2007, the government proudly said that government departments buy 20% green power. 20% is not enough, they should buy 100% green power. (Some friends and I buy 100% green power and have all been surprised by how little it increased our electricity bills.)

A press release from the Rann Government in December 2010 proudly spoke of the Government placing a carbon cap of 0.7 tonnes of CO2 per MWh of electricity generated on new electricity generation facilities. In effect what this means is that they intend to not build any more coal-fired power stations – a good thing one might think. But then South Australia's readily mined, fair quality or better, coal resources (effectively the Leigh Creek deposit) is nealy mined out, we have a plentiful supply of natural gas (for the near future at least) and a strong wind power sector (little thanks to the Government). Why would SA build another coal-fired power station?

In the same press release Mike Rann said that SA at the present 18% of SA's electricity is from wind power and that by 2020 33% of our electricity will be from the wind. If this goal is reached, some credit could go to the Government.

However, there were a number of limitations:

• People intending to produce enough solar power to make a profit would be excluded;
• If you already had a solar power set-up, no matter how small, you could not upgrade or build a second set-up on another property;
• Each set-up would be limited to 45kWh per day maximum;
• The entire scheme would be capped at 60MW (equal to the output of 20 or 30 modern wind turbines).

In a nut-shell, the Government's solar feed-in scheme is aimed at looking good (54¢/kWh), at giving a little to many voters – and thus winning support for Government at the next election, but at the same time limiting the development of solar power in South Australia.

If the Government was honestly trying to maximise the development of sustainable power it would ensure that a fair price was paid to all who generated sustainable power, based on the true value of that power (considering factors such as the cost of building new power stations, the value of distributed power generation, and the damage avoided by reducing greenhouse gas production). The power industry should be made to pay a fair price for solar and other sustaiable power, the government could provide a top-up.

A total of around 35¢/kWh to the small-scale generator seems reasonable and should be sufficient to support a healthy and growing industry; this should then be adjusted to take into account future general energy prices. It should then be made available to everyone and be payable for all forms of sustainable energy (particularly including small-scale wind).

Premier Rann's mini wind turbines will produce several kilowatts of sustainable electricity in a good wind. 2000MW of wind farms have been proposed in SA but not built because of lack of the right signals from State and Federal Governments. Changing the laws to encourage the construction of wind farms could allow many of these to be built. 2000MW is 20 000 times the 100 or so kilowatts that Premier Rann might get from his mini wind turbines on public buildings; it would make a real difference to Australia's greenhouse gas production rates.

This runs entirely counter to the government's advertised greenhouse-friendly ideals.

I wrote to Minister for the Environment Gail Gago on this matter on 2007/06/06, but have never received a reply other than a note saying that my letter had been received and passed on to the Premier.

On 20^th December 2007 the Rann Government announced that they had decided not to extend the railway from Cristies Beach to Sellicks Beach as previously announced.

This shows, yet again, that the Rann government is not interested in actions that will have a significant impact on greenhouse in spite of its rhetoric.

Population target

Fast commuter trains to the Adelaide Hills? One problem in the way of this development is that the Adelaide local railways are broad gauge while all long-distance lines in SA are standard gauge (the existing line to Mount Barker is standard, since it continues on to Melbourne). Another problem with using the existing line for commuter trains would be that it is too winding to ever be suitable for fast trains.

While the Adelaide Hills areas around Nairne, Little Hampton, and Mount Barker have been spoken of as the sites that are to see much of the population growth, government has refused to provide any rail transport from those areas to Adelaide; let alone fast rail transport.

Our government seems unable to see that with increased population comes the need for increased infrastructure:

• We have a water supply problem – there is not enough water for our present population;
• Adelaide's storm water could be collected and used, but to do so requires open space – more people means less open space;
• Where is the infrastructure to handle the increased sewerage to go?
• The existing power transmission line system is operating at its full capacity, even above it safe capacity;
• More people would require more energy – government has not shown commitment to substantially increase our amount of sustainable energy and to build more fossil-fuel fired power stations would be unconscionable;
• The average commuter journey in Adelaide has increased from around 22 minutes to around 30 minutes in the last few years; this is a decline in the quality of life for the people involved; more people means commuting times will increase even more;
• The present public transport system is not in good condition and is not good enough to attract people away from using private cars;
• More population, without more public transport, means that we would need more roads –;

The world as a whole is grossly over-populated. One of Australia's advantages is that it is less over-populated than most countries, therefore we are able to export foods. Increasing our population would decrease our ability to export.

Quality farm land is becoming scarcer world-wide; the government is proposing to house many of the new people on some of our best farm land;

The world needs more forest if we are to reduce our greenhouse gas production rates, the Adelaide Hills are one of the few places in the state with sufficient rainfall to grow forest, yet the government wants to cover the area with houses.

Red dust in Whyalla

"South Australia's Environment Protection Agency [EPA] worked closely with the health department and with local residents who were long sick of their washing turning ochre on the line and the linings of their lungs turning the same colour. The stage was set for new standards to limit the dust emissions. They weren't tough new regulations, just sensible ones, and the EPA was about to make those emission controls legally binding.

In stepped the State Government. With an Act of Parliament passed in late 2005, the Government wiped out those new dust regulation, sidelined the EPA, wiped out a court challenge the residents had mounted, and gave effective control over air quality to the department of mines and resources through the minister."

Penola pulp mill

Victoria Park grandstand

In Opposition, Mike Rann was the Great Defender, "We are a city in a park," he said in 2001. "Too often the Parklands have been seen as land on which to build, as empty space. Parkland isn't cheap land - it's priceless. It's time our Parklands were protected for good."

In June 2007 the government announced that it was considering increasing the size of Mount Bold Reservoir about three-fold. The aim of this $850 million project is to provide a place to store a much larger quantity of water from the Murray River for use, as required, in Adelaide. The flaw in the logic of this idea is that the Murray River has become much less reliable than it was before global warming. See Murray Darling.

At best the salinity of the Murray is gradually increasing and if this continues it will be more saline than the UN recommendation for human consumption in a decade or so. At worst there may well not be enough water reaching Mannum - where the water pumped to Mount Bold is taken from the river - to fill the enlarged reservoir.

It seems to me better to clean up and re-use water now going to waste.

A million dollars put toward making the electrical grid more compatible with wind farm electricity would have been more valuable environmentally. Or the money could have been put into research into a sustainable transport system.

The Rann Government is willing to spend a great deal of taxpayers' money (that could be far better spent) in using the courts to oppose the Australian Government. On the other hand the Australian Government, reasonably, has stated that the money it has to spend on fighting the South Australian Government will come out of South Australia's share of Federal Money.

Mike Rann seems to be fighting this purely because he perceives it to be a vote winner. It's past time that he dropped the subject, allowed it to happen, and got on with more important matters. This sort of show-case environmentalism that does no good for the environment is easy for a government to stage, but a total waste of money and effort in terms of achieving anything of value.

While Premier Rann fights the establishment of a low-level radioactive waste dump in the outback South Australia's low-level radioactive waste continues to be dumped at Wingfield on Adelaide's northern outskirts. (The Advertiser, June 27th 2003)

Premier Rann is very strongly in favour of the proposed expansion of the Olympic Dam copper-uranium-gold mine. The amount of radioactive waste in the Olympic Dam tailings dam is incomparably greater than the amount that will go to the proposed low-level dump that Rann is so strongly opposed to.

Zero waste

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (also called long-life light bulbs), while having the advantages over the old incandescent light bulbs of a longer life and reduced power consumption, have the disadvantage of containing the toxic heavy metal mercury. This being so they need to be disposed of carefully if they are not going to result in contamination that future generations are going to have to live with.

What has the Rann Government done to give all South Australians a convenient way to safely and correctly dispose of their CF bulbs? There is one place in the state (in Wingfield, I believe) that is open for one day a month where the bulbs can be handled!

Centralisation of hydrogeologists

(Many of the comments below would also apply to other professionals, I have written about hydrogeology because it is my field.)

• More travelling is involved getting to and from areas of study, this results in unnecessarily increasing greenhouse gas production as well as wasting time and money;
• The amount of travelling tends to discourage the hydrogeologist from going into the field, thus reducing his contact with the area he is working on;
• A hydrogeologist who lives in or near the area where he works will get to know the landowners and others who have an interest in the work (this point is covered in more depth below;
• It disadvantages country hydrogeologists. Hydrogeologists who were raised in the country often prefer to work in the country.
• It disadvantages country areas because it takes jobs out of the country and places them in the cities;
• By increasing the amount of travel, and due to the higher cost of office accommodation, etc. in the city, centralisation increases costs to the tax-payer;

Advantages of country posting of hydrogeologists

• In the case of well drilling programs, if a hydrogeologist is to have a good understanding of the formation through which a well has been drilled he must be on-site when the well is drilled. It is easier for him if he relies on the driller's log (driller's record of strata through which the hole was drilled), but this is very inferior because:
  • Driller's logs tend to be very abbreviated;
  • Drillers are usually not trained in either geology nor hydrogeology therefore they tend to not record many factors that would be of interest to the hydrogeologist;
  • The driller may not know what the hydrogeologist is interested in, and therefore will not be looking for that specific feature (eg. the top and bottom of a particular formation);
  • There is much that can be learned about drilling conditions from watching the behaviour of the drill;
  Nor are samples collected by the driller and forwarded to the hydrogeologist a substitute for the hydrogeologist being in the field while the hole is drilled.
• A hydrogeologist who lives in or near the area that he is studying will develop a close association with that area in many ways. This is very advantageous in his understanding of all the aspects of the area.
• A hydrogeologist living in an area will get to know the people involved in the groundwater industry;
• On the contrary, a hydrogeologist living in Adelaide and studying a country area tends to be divorced from the area and doesn't get to know the stakeholders; it is easy for him to become lazy and decide that it is too much trouble to do some particular field investigation, while had he been stationed nearby there would have been no problem.

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