Aussie politicians in brutal slanging match

  • 16/03/2017

Australian Federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg and South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill have been caught slanging each other off in one of the most excruciatingly brutal and awkward press conferences ever.

The conference was supposed to celebrate good news - the launch of the federal government supported AGL plan to put solar batteries on houses.

However, Mr Weatherill was not on the guest list, and his arrival shocked Mr Frydenberg - leading to an extraordinary joint press conference.

Mr Frydenberg accused the Premier's state of failing to effectively plan for the future, and said state governments "need to take responsibility".

Mr Weatherill was fired up, and fired back, attacking the federal government's plan to expand the Snowy Hydro scheme.

"It shows that the Commonwealth government are in a white knuckled panic about national energy policy. It is a $2 billion admission that the national energy market has broken and there needs to be public investments to actually fix it up," he said.

The two men stood side by side, refusing to look at each other.

"I have to say it is a little galling to be standing here next to a man who has been standing up with his prime minister bagging South Australia at every step of the way over the last six months," Mr  Weatherill told Mr Frydenberg.

"It is a disgrace the way in which your government has treated our state. It is the most anti-SA government we have seen from a Commonwealth government in living memory. What we have is a national energy market that is broken."

Mr Frydenberg retorted, saying the Premier "had made a $550 million admission of failure a couple of days ago ... to solve a problem that they created themselves with initiatives which won't in fact completely solve the problem for SA".

"I feel that the Premier trying to come into this to crash tackle us at this announcement where he hasn't put any money into this important initiative, which the Commonwealth and AGL have, just shows you, unfortunately, how desperate he is," he said.

Newshub.