[Shiraz (Ray)]

But by mid next year, the 22x cheaper plan would have run out of steam and we would have been back to square 1 - and nobody would have been willing to plan any power investment in the meantime.

dunno who was hiding the offer - I read about it months ago. Oh, that's right - it was in another News rag, but the Sunday Mail is not going to let the odd fact stand in the way of a good beatup - maybe they just thought that nobody would remember what was reported in the Australian, on August 25th:

Tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies was sought by one of the country’s largest energy companies to keep South Australia’s only major baseload power station operating, Premier Jay Weatherill says.

Following a report in The Australian that the state’s Labor government had rejected an offer to keep Alinta Energy’s coal-fired Northern Power station in Port Augusta open, Mr Weatherill said the cost to delay its closure could not be justified. He said Alinta had sought “tens of millions” in taxpayer funding, despite its intention to close it.

“The gall of the Liberals is that (after they sold the power plant), they now criticise us for not wanting to rent it back at some extortionary rate,’’ Mr Weatherill.

The rejection of the deal resulted in the plant closing in May, leaving the state reliant on power from Victoria and renewables.....

even though the article is wrong on two counts (SA has other major baseload generators and the closing of the plant was not the result of the rejection of the deal), it is quite clear that there was an offer to try to keep Northern running. Another low point in SA journalism for the Sunday Mail.