Opinion: Cheaper power not the only Labor promise that hasn’t eventuated

Power bills haven’t dropped by $275 as promised by Labor in 2022, and there’s another flow-on effect that hasn’t happened, writes Matt Canavan.

Labor infamously promised to lower power bills by $275 at the 2022 election.

That has not happened.

Less well known though is that Labor also promised that its net-zero plans would create 604,000 jobs.

According to Labor, half of these jobs would come from the increased trade and domestic benefits of low-cost renewable electricity production.

We have not got the low-cost electricity production. So we have not got these jobs either.

Quite the opposite.

Since Australia adopted net zero, electricity prices have increased by 39 per cent.

And that has meant that we have lost thousands of jobs, not gained them.

This week Australians received the sobering news that yet another major factory may shut. The Tomago aluminium smelter began life in 1983.

It is younger than me.

Tomago is the single largest user of electricity in the country.

Tomago provides direct employment for 1400 hard-working people.

Thousands more in the NSW Hunter region rely on the smelter for their jobs or their business.

Tomago is a shining example of what Australia can do when we harness our God-given resources with the hard-working spirit of Australian men and women.

As Tomago chief financial officer Andrew Newman said, “We have enjoyed the benefit of affordable coal-based contracts for the last 40 years of operation actually from Tomago’s perspective.”

The Hunter region has the best quality thermal coal in the world.

And then it all went wrong.

Australia signed up to net zero.

Rio Tinto, the majority owner of Tomago, went on the net-zero crusade too.

Rio decided they did not want to use coal any more.

Three years ago, Tomago announced that it was seeking to procure long-term traceable renewable energy and dispatchable firm power generation projects.

This was to underpin its decarbonisation strategy and net-zero ambition.

The company said it was committed to transitioning the business to a low-carbon future, and it was a key step towards reaching that very important goal.

Three years later Tomago CEO Jerome Dozol admitted: “Unfortunately, all market proposals received so far show future energy prices are not commercially viable.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

So Tomago pursued net zero and three years later it looks like it might have to close.

Another sad example of “go woke, go broke”.

Once again it will be the average Australian worker that pays the price for the folly of their employers and their politicians.

In the days after this sad news, Labor politicians bent over backwards to defend the pursuit of net zero even as it sees thousands of union workers lose their jobs.

The Minister for Industry seemed more at pains to defend net zero than the jobs of thousands of union workers.

He told the Senate: “There is an orderly process of modernising our electricity system, and that requires work, policy consistency and policy certainty.”

Imagine a Labor senator standing up in front of thousands of workers about to lose their jobs and telling them, “I am sorry about your heartache, but there is an orderly process of modernising our electricity system.”

We were told that modernisation would lower power prices and attract new jobs and investment to Australia.

But even when that does not happen, the Labor Party remains more committed to net zero than it does to protecting the jobs of the workers it used to represent.

Those like me who had predicted that this net-zero insanity would end in tears are called all sorts of names by the Labor Party.

We are “deniers” or “far Right” and the like.

But what is far Right about wanting to use our own resources to deliver a thriving manufacturing industry that delivers good-paying jobs?

That used to be what the Labor Party did.

Now it is too busy pleasing the United Nations to worry about the job security of average Australian workers.

When we used our energy resources we had some of the cheapest power prices in the world.

That meant the arrival of the latest quarterly bill was not a stressful occasion.

It also meant that Australian businesses could afford to pay some of the highest wages in the world.

Cheap energy gave us dear wages.

We are in the process of destroying the first part of that equation.

If we keep going, we will decimate the living standards of all Australians.

Matt Canavan is an LNP senator for Queensland