It’s time to power up from a petrostate to an electrostate
Government investment is a must to seize the once-in-a-century opportunity to leverage our natural advantages and position ourselves as a value-adding clean industry and export superpower.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ announcement last week of a new chair of the Productivity Commission comes not a moment too soon. The commission’s recently released FY2022 Trade and Assistance Review entirely misses the mark.
In calling for Australia to “maintain the free-trade rage” and decrying “poorly designed industry assistance”, it mischaracterises efforts to deploy capital support and spending programs to rebuild Australian manufacturing and value-add our world-leading renewable resources pre-export as high-cost protectionism. The report barely mentions the costs of the growing climate crisis.
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Tim Buckley is a director at Climate Energy Finance think tank.
