Renewables and severe weather

Richard Di Natale spoke to the media in Melbourne today, addressing last week's South Australian storms.

Transcript:

Someone like Josh Frydenberg reminds me of the little kid who bangs his head against the brick wall and then wonders why it's sore.

The reason we've seen state governments step in in here is because the Coalition has systematically destroyed all policies that would provide energy security and allow us to tackle dangerous climate change in our energy system.

Well the evidence is that we had an extreme storm that blew down out transmission system. Greg Hunt clearly needs a lesson in how electricity is generated and then transmitted.

Those wires don't generate electricity. They transmit it.

What we saw was a storm event. There's no question that we're going to see more of these as a result of dangerous climate change knocking down our transmission infrastructure. And that's what caused the problem here.

To blame this on the renewable energy side of the equation just misunderstands what's going on in the energy system and Greg Hunt has shown himself to be a rank opportunist here.

The Coalition doesn't miss an opportunity to have a whack at renewable energy despite the fact that this is a recipe for jobs, growth, investment, energy security and tackling dangerous climate change.