South Australia Initiates a Range of Offbeat Policies
- South Australia has pushed renewable energy, tax on big banks
- Shorten may adopt state’s policies if opposition takes power
Elon Musk and Jay Weatherill attend a press conference at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia, on July 7, 2017.
Photographer: Ben Macmahon/EPASouth Australia has always been a bit different: it’s the driest state on the Earth’s driest inhabited continent, the world’s first place to let women stand for election and the nation’s only settlement to exclude convicts.
Nowadays it’s a testing ground for the opposition Labor party to show how it could govern if it wins the next national election. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has initiated a range of offbeat policies to stimulate an economy devastated by the demise of traditional manufacturing industries, from opening a nuclear waste dump to raising taxes on big banks to tasking Elon Musk with installing the world’s largest renewable-energy battery.