Energy Policy Screaming Out For Courageous Common Sense Politicians

Reliable and affordable energy supplies were inevitably doomed once political ideologues replaced engineers and market economists. The obsession with hopelessly unreliable and heavily subsidised wind and solar is being driven by a cult with all the rationality and reason of the Spanish Inquisition.

Like the Inquisition, it takes more than just a little courage to take on the cult. Stick your head up for 5 minutes and point out that wind and solar have never worked, ever, anywhere, and rent-seekers and their goons in the MSM will have you hung, drawn and quartered before you know it.

In Australia, cult members include every member of the Australian Labor Party, the Greens and the so-called ‘Teals’ – a group of inner-city political wannabes backed by Simon Holmes a Court (a rent-seeking, nepo-baby, squandering his family inheritance by using his Teals to push for even more massive subsidies for wind turbines and solar panels).

There are plenty of conspicuous cultists among the notionally conservative Liberals and a few in the National Party. However, the majority of the Nationals and a few Liberals stand out as at least having the courage to tell the unarnished truth about the greatest environmental and economic fraud of all time.

The current Federal Government – a Labor/Green Alliance headed up by a Tory fighting activist who behaves like he’s still on a university campus, Anthony Albanese – is easily the most chaotic and destructive Commonwealth government this country has ever seen. And their energy policy is no exception.

It’s a topic picked up by Peter Smith in the article below, which spells out what Albanese’s opponents need to do to get energy policy back on track, and the country with it.

Peter Dutton’s Keys to The Lodge
Quadrant Online
Peter Smith
22 January 2024

If his principles didn’t suit, Groucho famously offered up others in their stead, mimicking politicians to a tee. Politicians grub for votes wherever it takes them. That’s why Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong and most of their Labor mates are shy about supporting Israel. Might upset Muslim voters. Of course those on the left are inclined to support authoritarian creeds as a matter of perverted principle, but make no mistake, votes and the power and perks they bring is the overriding factor.

Can one cynically say the same about the Liberals and Nationals? Are they also without fixed principles. Oh yes, I believe so. Maybe not to the same extent as Labor mates but it’s a close run thing. Look at the way Scott Morrison signed up to net zero, beat up on our SAS troops, bullied Christine Holgate, and genuflected to #MeToo re Brittany Higgins. Unedifying. Playing to the mob. Were votes uppermost in his mind? Do you think.

Look at the way successive Coalition governments have squirmed and balked at removing or even amending 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, since its introduction by Keating. Obviously, free speech is one of those dispensable principles. Also let’s not forget in all of this political hoo-ha over nuclear power that Howard made it illegal. And, of course, there has been much more expediency down through the years. There is no unaffordable welfare or health scheme that Labor conjured up that the Coalition hasn’t embraced and expanded.

This universal lack of principle has an advantage. Apropos an conversation supposedly had between Winston Churchill and an unnamed socialite at a dinner gathering.

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?

Socialite: Well, we would have to settle terms

Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?

Socialite: What kind of woman do you think I am!

Churchill: Madam, we have already established that. Now we are haggling over the price.

Even though the exchange is almost certainly apocryphal, it endures because it has grain of truth to it, which we all recognise. But it’s also instructive. Once high-minded principles are put aside we can get down to brass tacks.

The Coalition has no enduring principles anyway so it needs to put away pretence and get down to brass tacks; that is, if it wants to win the next election. Energy is the key. Luckily for the Coalition, the Labor Party is in thrall of obsessive climate cultist Chris Bowen. He is intent on completing the destruction of Australia’s affordable and reliable energy system, thereby driving residual manufacturing offshore. In a phrase, he’s intent on making us poor. It’s already happening. Prices up 16.5 per cent from September 2020 to September 2023. Wages up only 9.5 per cent. [i]

Bowen’s a gift horse. Don’t look him in the mouth is our advice to Dutton. Our, I say, because Rafe Champion and I conferred on the matter over coffee and I feel bound to share the credit. Something akin to eschewing plagiarism, if you like. Claudine Gay, and, of course, Joe Biden might take note. The advice, in my words, in point form:

• Bucket Bowen at every opportunity. He’s a gift which will keep on giving.
• Abandon all hope of retaking inner-city seats lost to Teals. I live among these people. They are seriously compromised by climate hysteria.
• Unashamedly abandon net zero, as being both unachievable and destructive of jobs and living standards.
• Abandon subsidies for wind and solar, electric cars and charging stations.
• Retain concern about combatting climate change (however silly it is), while explaining that reducing emissions must be done sensibly — in a way that will bring down emissions while protecting jobs and living standards. Use this message to semi-appease Liberal pantywaists.
• Promote and support new gas power stations, new HELE coal power stations, and offer the prospect of nuclear as the eventual ultimate clean energy. Sure, nuclear is pie-in-the sky, but it makes good political copy.
• Target outer suburban and regional communities. The referendum showed there is plenty of common sense out there to be tapped with sensible energy policies.

There is an alternative. Go Labor-cum-Greens-cum-Teals-lite and lose.

You might say that abandoning net zero, developing new coal-power stations and the like is a political suicide act. Maybe five years ago. Not now. Bowen is living in the past. Power has to be flowing every tick of the clock, and attempting to fill in with battery storage is a fool’s errand.

There is a growing realisation in the real world, outside of the imaginary world occupied by climateers like Bowen, that intermittent unreliable energy will not power a modern economy. And, to boot, electric vehicle sales look like hitting a brick wall once buyers in the swankier parts of town are sated and EVs have to be sold to the masses. A sample below of some signs in the wind, as it were:

• Rishi Sunak has dialled back some of the UK’s net zero polices; though, of course, he still pledged fealty to tackling climate change at COP 28.
• More than 20 countries from four continents at COP 28 launched a declaration to triple nuclear energy by 2050.
• In Germany some twenty coal power stations were recommissioned to get through this European winter. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner also seems to have a bout of realism: “Until it is clear that energy is available and affordable, we should end dreams of phasing out electricity from coal in 2030,” he said in an interview with the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.
• Hertz is dumping 20,000 EVs. Anyone want to buy a used EV?
• From the magazine Fortune: “Drivers don’t want to buy used electric vehicles, and that’s undermining the market for new ones, too.” See, too, EV graveyards in China.

The trend is clear. It’s not being driven by politics. It is and will increasingly be driven by real life. Solar, wind and EVs have not emerged from free market forces, as has every new profitable product and service in the past. They have been foisted on us by government fiat. They are bound to fail, only thing, many deluded people and governments don’t know it yet. It’s Dutton’s opportunity.

[i] ABS stats on the CPI and the Wage Price Index.
Quadrant Online