“Smokin'” Joe Hockey, odds on to be our next Treasurer, appeared on Alan Jones’ show last week, being quizzed hard about the great Australian wind power fraud. Listen here.
Joe did his best to stick to the script, bleating name, rank and “no carbon tax” in answer to a barrage of questions directed at the obscene cost of wind power. Listen closely as Jones smells blood in the water and goes in for the kill.
STT readers know that with a floating price for carbon credits, and the trading price in Europe at less than $3 per tonne, the carbon tax is a complete red herring. The real reason for escalating retail power prices is bound up in the RET and the REC, with worse to come with the planned roll out of 3-4,000 turbines across Australia. As Jones circles, hear Joe uncharacteristically stumble as he is confronted with that fact for the first time in public. At one point Joe sounds like he really wants to phone a friend, when he says he needs to “consult with his colleagues” – about what STT says is the real issue.
STT says Joe just needs to tap into the solid set of principles that he is known for: a fair go for all Australians; helping people who can’t help themselves (ie the poorest and most vulnerable) and making sure companies stand on their own feet. The first two mean a Coalition government can’t sit on its hands and watch households and business get pummeled with a further doubling of retail power prices over the next 2-3 years. The third means that the Coalition cannot possibly countenance a system which provides a ludicrous stream of subsidies through the REC tax for a product that fails on all fronts – cost, reliability, and on environmental grounds.
The interview set the cat among the pigeons as the greentard bloggers panic about the day of reckoning drawing ever closer.
So will the “real” Joe Hockey please stand up – stand up, that is, for the people that you aim to represent and for the principles you espouse. STT suggests that you pop along to the National Rally, June 18, Parliament House, Canberra – after all, we’ll be just outside your door with a bunch of your Parliamentary colleagues who are keen to tell Australia that the wind power fraud is over. How about it, Joe?
STOP THESE THINGS 
Typical of Politics and Politicians.
Politicians are like poker machines they make a lot of noise before they’re elected and give you nothing after.
Wind energy installations don’t cost much – to those erecting them. We need to keep the pressure and information up to the Coalition as well as all other parties and individuals putting their hands up for election, whether it is the Federal Election in September or State/Territory elections due – whenever. Pressure, that causes headaches just like the headaches these things are giving us. We need to be the noise they hear and feel.
Joe’s comments on wind farms have scared the eagles on my place half to death. The RET/REC scheme cost doesn’t show up in Joe’s budget papers so he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. Either way he will never rectify Australia’s financial position if he can’t work out that The RET/REC scheme totally ‘white ants’ the economic well being of the nations citizens. Just look at Europe (and all for nothing). I say we lobby for Ron Boswell as treasurer, he gets it! Some ‘smart alecs’ in the liberal party dreamed this great scheme up and the labor party went berserk with it — does the coalition now have the guts to throw it out? Believe it or not but there are some in the coalition who still don’t think ‘wind farms’ cost very much!