Who can it be now?

Who can it be knocking at the wind scammers’ door?

BIG COAL?

CSG?

BIG NUKES?

The correct answer is – NONE OF THE ABOVE.

Over the last few weeks the eco-fascists writing in the lefty-tabloids and on their blogs have been speculating on who runs this clearly evil, insidious and clandestine outfit – STT – and who it is that has organised the National Rally coming up on June 18, Parliament House, Canberra.

We’re so glad you asked.

The STT Rally has been put together by a group of blokes who know how to wear a hat and look good.

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Blokes who can still ride a horse like Clancy’s ol’ mate from the High Country.

And a group of women who can still bake the most brilliant scones from scratch (no pre-prepared rubbish for our folk).  And who aren’t afraid to jump on a tractor, to work a wool press or to crack the whip and round up cattle.

If you’re wondering what we look like together, here’s a little taste.

This is some of us warming up last year in preparation for the final push to kill the wind industry stone cold dead.

We are farmers, doctors, shopkeepers, engineers, teachers, nurses, quarry owners, mechanics, truck drivers, Russian Orthodox priests and monks, Aboriginals who are the traditional owners and custodians of the land, like Shane Mortimer, environmentalists, country solicitors and just about everything in between.

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We come from Denmark in WA; Curramulka, Waterloo, Hallett, Mt Bryan, Lake Bonney, and Allendale in SA; Waubra, Macarthur, Cape Bridgewater, Mt Gellibrand, Hepburn Springs, Bald Hills, Toora and Stockyard Hill in Victoria; Dalby and Coopers Gap in Southern QLD and Tolga on the Atherton Tablelands in FNQ; Cullerin, Collector, Gunning, Crudine Ridge, Wellington, Bodangora, Crookwell, Gullen Range, Goulburn, Lake George, Boorowa and Rugby in NSW, well from all over the Tablelands, really; King Island, Bass Strait (we think the Tasmanians claim it as theirs – but are trying to give it away to the Chinese).

Here’s a picture of where we come from.

Ok, so we don’t come from the Northern Territory, but only because the wind goons haven’t troubled the Top End.

The eco-fascists, and the greentards who do their bidding, are very keen to paint us as cranks, red-necks, climate change deniers, astroturfers and so on.

No-one at STT knew what “astroturfing” was, but Lucy from accounts reckoned it had something to do with falling over when you’re playing hockey.

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And, sorry to disappoint, but we aren’t covered in coal dust or yellow cake.  Although many of our number have sheep shit on their boots most of the time.

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We don’t deny that the climate is changing, we are a group of people who live in and “die” by the climate – the weather can make or break us; and we are trained to adapt to it.

Between us we’ve planted millions of trees; repaired eroded creeks and gullies; regenerated saline land and generally looked after the country – our lives depend upon it.

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In short, the STT Rally is all about a large group of farmers and people from rural communities spread from Far North Queensland to Western Australia and all points in between.

No one person speaks for them, but all of them speak for the Country.

The STT Rally is all about the ridiculous and un-calculated cost of wind power, costs that have never been properly accounted for.  Costs arising from:

ESCALATING POWER PRICES – which have doubled in the last 3 years and will double again over the next 2-3 years as the RET/REC policy takes full effect.

Power consumers have paid an extra $8 billion on their power bills since the policy started and will pay a further additional cost of $54 billion over the next 18 years.

This unjustified cost arises as a result of the REC Tax, the entire cost of which is added to retail power prices and born by all of us – rich and poor alike.

HARM TO THE POOREST – a large and rising number of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society simply can’t afford what has been, and should be, a basic and affordable commodity.

The SA Labor government is planning to run workshops to help a growing number of South Australians deal with having their power cut-off, and to otherwise try and manage the crippling escalation of power prices.

This is an issue of equity and human compassion.  Being unable to pay a power bill is no laughing matter for the poor, the infirm and the old.

LOST EMPLOYMENT – and we mean “real employment” in farming, manufacturing and mining.

SA has the highest power prices in the World and the other States are fast catching up.

Our challenge to the next Federal Government is:

can Australia retain any sort of manufacturing sector?

can Australia retain and attract mining investment?

None of this can happen if the current RET/REC policy is retained, causing a key input cost to those businesses to increase at around 25% each year – QLD just announced an annual power price increase of 23%.

Power is cheap in China, where most of our manufacturing is heading; and energy costs have plummeted in the USA, helping it to rebuild employment through renewed investment in industry.  Energy costs matter.

DAMAGE TO RURAL COMMUNITIES – small rural populations depend on every family in the District, sometimes to keep a local school going or to field a footy team.

So far, some 40 homes have been abandoned by their owners at places like Toora, Waubra and Macarthur in Victoria, and Waterloo in SA, because the incessant low frequency noise from turbines has made these homes unliveable.

Wind farm developers have purchased dozens of these homes at places like Waubra and Toora, with the compensation paid to those abandoning homes effectively funded – in a perverse twist – by the REC Tax on power consumers.  That is, foreign owned wind farm operators are buying Australian homes with taxpayers’ money.

REDUCED FARM PRODUCTION – impacts on rural production where the opportunity to use aerial spraying for fertilizing crops and pastures or for weed and pest control is lost.

Associated with this is the inability of fire-fighters to control bushfires using aerial water bombing, putting rural lives at unnecessary risk.

DAMAGE TO THE ENVIRONMENT – trying to integrate intermittent wind power into a base-load fossil fuelled grid results in increased emissions of GHG.

Every MW of wind power capacity is backed up with a MW of fossil fuel capacity (or at least 90% thereof) at all times.

Thermal fossil fuel generators have to run their boilers on standby when the wind is blowing and be prepared at a minute’s notice to generate the shortfall when the wind stops blowing, as it naturally does – this means more gas or coal is consumed, not less.

Peaking power which is called in to make up the shortfall is supplied by gas powered turbines and costs 3-4 times the costs of thermal or hydro power.

And don’t forget the hundreds of thousands of birds and bats, including threatened and endangered species, which are killed every year by wind turbines.

For these reasons, STT doesn’t believe there is “a right place for industrial wind turbines”.  Because wind farms do not, and can never, reduce GHG emissions – they are a complete waste of taxpayer and power consumer’s money.

STT’s point is that no-one has thought through the actual costs – and the industry refuses to put evidence forward of any of the claimed benefits in terms of GHG reduction or regarding any of the other touted benefits, for that matter.

Models and desktop studies based on flawed and unrealistic assumptions are all the industry has.

The economics of wind power just don’t stack up – 4 times the cost of hydro, coal or gas -and with no proven benefit – this Country has been slow to wake up – the STT Rally is the wake-up call.

Germany just has, as it has announced it is winding back its subsidies, because people there are fed up with escalating power prices driven by their blind rush into wind and solar power generation.

The media and politicians have taken the wind industry’s wild and unproven claims as an article of faith.

The rally is about shaking the Country into realising that wind power is not “green”; it is intermittent, unreliable and ridiculously expensive when its true costs are accounted for.

And the claimed benefits are a cruel hoax.

The politicians who support wind power have simply devoured the lies and myths spouted by the wind industry and fall into 2 camps:

1. those who are simply “pig” ignorant; or
2. little piggies with their trotters in the wind scam trough

STT is out to correct the failings of the ignorant and to empty the trough so that the political snouts can go and find something else to fatten up on.

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If Australia really wants to see more manufacturers, like Ford, close their doors, then it should stick with the current RET/REC policy – which is a perfect guarantee that the businesses that build stuff and provide meaningful employment for a growing population, will shut their doors pretty soon.  If they haven’t already.

But if we want our kids to have meaningful and lasting employment then we have to get rid of the RET/REC policy and build a policy that delivers truly clean, cheap and reliable energy for everybody.  This Rally is not about ideology, this is about our survival as a modern, prosperous and equitable Nation.

See you there, June 18, 2013, Parliament House, Canberra.