Premier Chris Minns has promised to uncover how outback communities in western NSW were left without power. Video by AAP
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00:00The emergency services are working to re-establish connection via Starlink in the coming hours.
00:05I want to make it clear that when you have a regional remote community,
00:11there must be redundancy power in place, there must be a backup generator in place.
00:15And Roy was the first person to tell me that Transgrim is responsible for generating power
00:21and transmitting it to Broken Hill. One of the two gas fired generators has been inoperable
00:28since November. The second one broke down five o'clock yesterday afternoon. That's clearly not
00:34good enough. Our immediate responsibility is to get electricity back on in Broken Hill but
00:38straight after that we'll be ensuring that there's an inquiry as to how this happened
00:42and so that regional communities know the power will be available when there is a natural emergency.
00:48A lot of people are very concerned about, you know, access to food and that sort of thing
00:53at supermarkets that have been unable, a lot of small businesses haven't been able to have
00:57their staff come on ship. So there's a lot we've got to do. I do want to acknowledge there's been
01:02a fairly rapid response from the State Government here to actually make sure these generators are
01:06out there. I welcome the Premier's comment that we will look into some of the antecedents and
01:11what's happened because I think we really deserve that. There is an upside.
01:15We see the best of our communities when times are tough.