A while ago we reported on the moment when Maurice Newman had the courage to point to the elephant in the room: spiralling power prices being driven through the roof by intermittent and unreliable – subsidy fuelled – wind power – driving Australian businesses to the wall.
Well, Maurice – former head of Deutsche Bank, the ABC and ASX – and adviser to our next PM, Tony Abbott – has not only identified the hitherto invisible pachyderm – he is all set to hunt down the rogue elephant and pop some lead into it.
In this piece from green-lefty rag The Guardian – Maurice doesn’t mince his words when he describes windfarms as involving an “obscene wealth transfer from poor to rich” and “a crime against the people” – as he calls for the RET to be scrapped in its entirety.
STT is glad he’s on our side. Here’s what The Guardian had to say.
Top Abbott business adviser wants renewables target scrapped
Maurice Newman, chairman of Coalition’s proposed business advisory council, doubts scientific case for global warming
The Guardian
Lenore Taylor
13 June 2013
The chairman of Tony Abbott’s proposed business advisory council, Maurice Newman, has called for the renewable energy target (RET) to be scrapped because he believes the scientific evidence for global warming and the economic case for renewable energy no longer stack up.
Newman, the former chairman of the ABC and the ASX, said persisting with government subsidies for renewable energy represented a “crime against the people” because higher energy costs hit poorer households the hardest and there was no longer any logical reason to have them.
Newman acknowledged Coalition policy was to retain the current target to generate 20% of renewable energy by 2020, but told Guardian Australia in his opinion “the whole science on which this is based is somewhat in tatters”.
Speaking of the advisory council he would chair under an Abbott government, Newman said: “It is inevitable energy prices will be one of the issues that will be of concern to business. Low energy prices are what has always made Australia internationally competitive and because of the RET and the carbon tax we have lost that advantage.
“Whether the Coalition will change their policy on the RET is up to them … I believe it should be removed because the basis upon which we accepted in good faith that we needed it is no longer there.
“When we look at the experience of Germany, they have not been successful in reducing emissions; when we look at the science it no longer supports the global warming theory and when we look at the health and economic effects of windfarms and the obscene wealth transfer from poor to rich we have to ask: why are we persisting with them? I think it is a crime against the people.”
Guardian Australia contacted Newman after seeing minutes of a meeting of an anti-windfarm group called the Crookwell District Landscape Guardians at his southern highlands property on 28 April.
Newman appeared to warn the 56 attendees they might not sway the Coalition.
“Given the experience of the NSW Coalition which promised much when in opposition, but in government pursued the same policies as Labor … we should reserve judgment until after the election,” he said.
But other anti-windfarm activists are preparing for a 18 June rally at Parliament House, effectively trying to use the same “people’s revolt” strategy encouraged by Abbott against the carbon tax to try to push the Coalition leader to drop the RET and stop new windfarms.
A slick, anonymously-run website called Stop These Things (STT) urged readers to attend the June rally because “while it’s safe to assume the Coalition will cruise to victory in September, don’t assume they are on our side”. It added: “It’s time to put them in the spotlight and find out precisely where they stand … the main game is in Canberra where the RET policy was started and where it has to end. The Coalition need to get the message loud and clear – and the message is simple. Australia simply can’t afford the great wind power fraud.
“With the federal government effectively sanctioning a doubling of power prices over the next two or three years, the Coalition will be helping to destroy businesses and harm families … We’d never advocate a riot, but the time is right for marching in the streets. So grab your placards, don your T-shirts and put your angry face on for a march on parliament.”
“STT thinks it’s time to let the Coalition know that Australia is not going to pay exorbitant prices for electricity simply on the basis of some ideological whim … This is not just a matter for country people trying to protect their rural communities. It’s about a battle for affordable electricity and the future of the country.”
“STT throws down the gauntlet to Coalition MPs to turn up and front the mob that assembles on 18 June to explain what the Coalition plans to do about the greatest fraud in Australian history.”
“STT thinks that the wind industry is well and truly on the ropes, but our ‘never say die until it’s dead and buried’ attitude means we won’t be happy until there is a garlic-coated crucifix driven through the heart of this rort-ridden scam of the century. Turn up, be loud and take our country back. Let 18 June 2013 be a day the Coalition won’t forget.”
Coalition senators Chris Back and Ron Boswell and backbencher Craig Kelly are scheduled to attend the rally.
As reported by Guardian Australia, the Coalition’s yet-to-be-released resources policy will pledge to mandate continuous noise monitoring of windfarms, a requirement the industry says is crippling in cost and will not provide useful information.
The Coalition resources spokesman, Ian Macfarlane, says the Coalition supports windfarms and the policy aims to allay community fears and provide transparent information. But many Coalition MPs want to see the RET scrapped and new windfarms banned.
Newman has previously made his anti-wind power and climate sceptic views clear, but has not put the business case for the Coalition to remove the RET.
Last January Newman wrote in the Spectator that windfarms were “grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don’t even achieve the purpose for which they were designed – namely the reliable generation of electricity and the reduction of CO2 emissions”.
Abbott has said the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council, to be chaired by Newman, would meet three times a year.
Newman said he imagined it would be similar to the financial sector advisory committee he chaired under the Howard government, which had a secretariat in the treasury.
As well as health and landscape concerns, members of the Crookwell Landscape Guardians at the meeting were concerned that “electro magnetic electricity” could be transferred from windfarms through the air and the ground, possibly causing failures of farm machinery and the danger of electric shocks from farm bores.
Newman’s property is close to the Crookwell 1 and 2 windfarms proposed by Union Fenosa.
The Guardian
There are more than a few little chestnuts in the piece above.
When The Guardian says that “many Coalition MPs want to see the RET scrapped and new windfarms banned” it understates – by a considerable margin – the magnitude of Coalition hostility to wind power – starting from the top down.
That’s right, the next PM is no fan of giant fans and STT hears that Mr Abbott is almost ready to deliver the coup de grace – it’s only a matter of time.
The wind industry’s “Great White Hope” is Ian Macfarlane – who could be no more isolated from his party than if he were living on Mars. What’s that you say about betting against the house?
The mood inside the Coalition party room is such that any betting man would be laying their money on the RET going the same way as the Tasmanian Tiger.
We regret wiping the Thylacine out – but the only folks who will shed a tear for the RET are a handful of wind scammers and swindlers – and the parasites that depend on them for their existence.
STOP THESE THINGS 
Maurice Newman an individual of immense achievement and integrity has succinctly summed up the deception of the wind industry in a single breath as “grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don’t even achieve the purpose for which they were designed – namely the reliable generation of electricity and the reduction of CO2 emissions”
Echos of James Lovelock and his condemnation of the false god of wind earlier this year. Perhaps STT could track back to that remarkable post?
The wind industry should take heed. Origin seems to have taken notice. Perhaps the others are working out their escape routes as a new federal government looms? The risk matrix is code red for the continuation of subsidies ie almost certain to be reduced/withdrawn with critical consequence for an industry based on falsification and propaganda. An industry that has not cared at all about the lives of neighbors it trashes. That lobbies furiously behind the scenes and co-opts public health and academic institutions, and feeds the urban centric public health climate change gravy train whilst screwing rural communities, ‘in the name of the planet’.
It is an industry that has cynically adopted Greenspeak whilst laughing all the way to the bank with our hard earned taxes, for personal enrichment and nought environmental gain.
It’s time. Their use by date is past. As the Wind Industry suits gaze at their Risk Matrices the answer is clear. They are heading for a catastrophic failure because their financial, economic and environmental reasons for existence are a fraudulent house of cards about to collapse with the wind change.
The ongoing Risk to the people and government of this nation is too great. The international Risk is also exceeded. Wind Up now!
Well, Mr Newman, you are right on the money with what you have said about the useless industrial wind turbines. There are a big number of people, who are suffering servere stress & health problems from the FRAUDULENT industrial wind turbines. The sooner we get rid of the bloody wind turbines, the better.
See you all Tuesday next week at Parliament house, Canberra.
Looking forward to meeting you too.