Rally – Angus Taylor

Our next speaker at the National Rally was Angus Taylor, who has been pre-selected as the Liberal candidate for the electorate of Hume, in New South Wales.

Angus spoke about the destruction of communities by wind turbine developments and the absurd economics of the subsidies on wind turbines and how much they are and will cost the Australian people. If the Coalition form the next government, he is committed to reviewing the RET in 2014.

This is a transcript of the video

AJ: … have back problems and the jam up hospital beds because they have got back problems and jam up orthopaedic surgeons, and so on, and I said to him I have invented a posturepedic chair and that posturepedic chair is so fantastic that no one will have back problems again, and our health bill will be cut dramatically and we will free up surgeons to do other things. The trouble is, I said to him, it’s costing me $450 bucks to make the chair and I can’t afford it. Will you give me a $150 subsidy on every chair? Ha-Ha-Ha he said. What are you laughing for? I said you do this to renewable energy, you do this to some bloke that wants to have a wind turbine somewhere and you say hello, we think this is fantastic, and we will subsidise you to the tune of 52 thousand million dollars, over the next 18 years – 52 billion dollars. I mean this is absurd for a country that is broke – even if it had merit – and yet at the end of the day we know that the risks in relation to this wind power nonsense are far too great to ask people to have to accept them. And there isn’t adequate health studies into it at all.

Alby Schultz can’t be here today. Poor Alby is not sick, he is very sick. And he has been a marvellous proponent of common sense based on factual statements in relationship to this. His electorate is the electorate of Hume, which goes from Cowra across the Southern Highlands, West Wyalong and Cootamundra. And if things go as planned, that electorate will have 1400 turbines.

I might add Cameron, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has just had an absolute raucous in his party room, to the extent now that they have banned in Britain, all on-shore wind farms. Basically they said, we can’t afford this and the wake-up, exactly – why the hell don’t we wake …well the people up here must hate us so much that they’re out to destroy everything we do, and everything we stand for and everything we want.

Finland have banned all on-shore wind farms.

But in the Hume … when I interviewed Alby Schultz … and I will just share this with you because his successor is going to speak to us in a moment. When I last spoke to Alby Schultz, and he has recorded this in the Hansard, so it can be challenged if it is wrong. Alby Schultz could be made to apologise to the Parliament, but no one has tackled Alby Schultz on what he said, which is recorded in the Harsard. He said, the existing subsidies in his electorate of Hume will total 10 billion dollars over 10 years, 10 thousand million dollars in one electorate. In the Hansard he said, that will equal between $450,000 to $900,000 per wind turbine. It’s in the Parliament. Alby Scultz. That’s your money, taxpayer’s money, so that these people can make exorbinate profits for alleged wind power and repatriate those to wherever they are, overseas, where ever the hell they are that these people come from, to plunder, and pillage and vandalise our country. But however, they are being enabled to do it by this kind of money. And Alby Schultz made this point, with 10 thousand million dollars, you could duplicate the Barwin (sic) Highway for 600 million, rebuild the Goulburn hospital for 150 million, set up close circuit television in every major town to prevent crime, for 2 million, fix mobile phone and TV reception black spots for 2 million, pay off the Yass Council debt of 18 million and you will be able to hand back all the subsidies to the Government to reduce electricity prices for everyone else. And that is one electorate. One electorate. This is a scandal.

Well the man who is going to replace him, well he’s not in the Parliament yet, but he will walk in. He’s brilliantly credentialed. I am going to embarrass him. I’d never met the man – but he is brilliantly credentialed, economically, and in terms of the corporate world and finance and on top of that of course, is a Rhode Scholar. So the next member for the seat of Hume, is Mr Angus Taylor, where is he?

AT: Thank you Alan, you’ve taken a fair bit of my speech, but I’ll have a go anyway. It is a huge pleasure to be here. I look around at the sea of faces and for the journalists here, you should know, that a huge proportion of the people here are from the electorate of Hume, my electorate. It runs – put your hands up everybody from Hume, there is a huge proportion here. This seat runs from here, just north of Canberra, all the way up to Sydney and it includes shires like Boorowa, Yass, Harden, Goulburn, Upper Lachlan, all of which have significant plans for new wind turbines.

And for many years now, including in my home town where I was brought up, Nimmitabel, south of here, I have watched the divisions within communities as these wind turbine developments go ahead. And they’ve worried me for a long, long time.

But I want to talk to you just for a few minutes today about what is motivating me to be here and what is not motivating me to be here. And I’ll start with what is not making me to be here. First of all I am not a climate skeptic. For 25 years, 25 years, I have been concerned about our rising carbon dioxide emissions might have an impact on our climate. It remains a concern of mine today. That is not what is motivating me to be here.

Second, I do not have a vendetta against renewables. My Grandfather was William Hudson, he was the first Commissioner and chief engineer of the Snowy scheme, Australia’s greatest renewable scheme. He believed in renewables and renewables are in my blood, and have been from the day I was born.

I am not against development. I firmly believe that this corridor between here and Sydney has one of the greatest development potential in all of Australia. In fact we have one of the fastest growing shires in all of Australia, because people want to live there. And I know a number of people in this audience today, who have come to live in this region because it’s a great place to live. They want to keep that amenity, they want to keep it a great place to live.

So what is motivating me to be here?

Well, I’m watching these local communities across Hume and other parts of Australia, tear themselves to pieces tear themselves to pieces, cousins verses cousin, brothers verses brothers, for massive subsidies to the wind industry, facilitated by the Federal Government.

Now those subsidies are over and above the cost of reducing Carbon emissions by other means – this is not about reducing Carbon emissions. This is about subsidies to an industry. So let me take you through, let me take you through some of the details of those subsidies, (Alan’s already stolen some of my thunder on these).

Each wind turbine that is being built today is expecting half a million dollars or more of subsidies every year for its life. Half a million dollars a year. That is more than 50% of its revenues is coming from a Federal Government subsidy. Across the electorate of Hume, by 2020, that will amount to half a billion to a billion dollars a year of subsidies going into the electorate. Over and above, as I say, over and above the cost of reducing Carbon emissions by other means.

So who is paying for this? Well the answer is, as it always is, you and I. We’re paying for it. And we’re paying for it in our electricity bills.

There is a sort of a genius to this scheme, where for the first few years, you don’t really notice it. But by 2020, the impost on Australian electricity bills will amount to about 3 billion dollars a year. That we are all paying. And it will be like the proverbial boiled frog, no one will notice because slowly the water is getting warmer and warmer. Three billion dollars a year by 2020, as I say, over and above the cost of reducing Carbon emissions by other means.

The wind industry will always tell you about what the subsidies were last year, or the year before. But it’s 2020 we should be looking out for, because that’s where they get really steep.

So, I have a proposition to put to Government behind us. To Julia Gillard and the Greens Government. And my proposition is this. Give those subsidies to those subsidies for those 1200 wind turbines that are planned in Hume, plus the 200 that are already there. Give those subsidies to the people of Hume. And  we will give back to them, the Carbon emissions targeted by those wind turbines, plus 50%. Plus 50%, so we will over-deliver on the Carbon emissions reduction targeted.

And then, in three years, I will become the most popular politician in Australia. Because with those subsidies I will duplicate the Barton highway (not the Barwin highway Alan) and how many of you came here on the Barwin Highway today? How many of you want to see it duplicated? Right we will do that in year one. In year two, we are going to fix the Goulburn hospital, we’re going to fix every pothole in the electorate we’re going to get mobile phones fixed, we are going to fix the DTV reception in Crookwell. How many of you are here from Crookwell? Good on you Crookwell people. We are going to fix that one too. You name the project and we will get it done, and I think we’ll have it all done in about three years. We will wash our hands and give the rest of the money back to the Australian people.

So that is my proposition to the Gillard Government. And it is only possible to put that proposition to you today because of the absurdity of the economics of these subsidies. So what are we going to do about it? Well, if they don’t accept my proposition, and right now, I doubt they will, if they don’t accept my proposition, the Coalition, as Chris said earlier, has committed to review the RET in 2014 if we win Government. We need to win Government for that to happen. That review will not happen if Labor stays in power.

I need your support and your help to make sure that review puts the facts on the table to the Australian people. Because I have the complete faith in the wisdom of the Australian people if these facts are put in front of them. Thank you.

All the Rally videos will be available in this playlist.