Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia—Minister for Education and Training) (14:20): Senator Di Natale is clearly ignoring the elements of the AEMO report that make it clear that were the scheduled closure of Liddell in 2022 to go ahead there would be a supply shortfall. When there is a supply shortfall, the consequences for households and businesses are real. Our government is working on the delivery of Snowy 2.0, which can provide reliable energy into the system. But that will take time. It's important that, in delivering these things, we keep maximum reliability in the system, which is where extending the life of something like Liddell— Senator Di Natale: Mr President, a point of order on relevance: I did ask very explicitly in my question whether the government would rule out spending public money on extending the life of the Liddell coal-fired plant. The PRESIDENT: Just prior to that you did ask why won't the government adopt the report, or the details of the report, and the minister at the beginning of the answer to your question indicated elements of the report. He directly responded and was directly relevant and indicated why not. I agree he hasn't answered the second element of your question but he certainly answered the first element. Senator BIRMINGHAM: This government is not going to make any apologies for engaging directly with the owners of Liddell to make sure, if it is at all possible and viable, that that plant continues its operation beyond the scheduled closure date to give the reliability and base load certainty to our energy markets in the future that will help to keep prices down and reliability up. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT: Senator Di Natale, a final supplementary question.