Terry McCrann: Why the pathetic $1.5b handout is a joke
The Prime Minister’s $1.5b manufacturing plan is a pointless joke. We’ve already traded away our key global advantage — cheap coal-fired electricity, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
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The two best things to be said about the latest prime ministerial thought bubble is that it is only going to waste an initial $1.5bn and as a consequence probably won’t do too much damage in doing so.
It used to be the case that, as a former US senator famously put it: “A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money.”
But these days with the federal government gaily spending at least $520bn each and every year and heading rapidly to $600bn and points inexorably higher, that $1.5bn spread over four years — “just” $375m a year — means you can be thankful for small mercies from monumentally stupid politicians.
“We’re from the government and we are here to help you,” the PM from marketing central, Scott Morrison, and his Industry Minister, Karen Andrews, blathered Thursday.
From the government that supposedly doesn’t try to pick winners, it will instead “support projects within six National Manufacturing Priorities which reflect Australia’s established competitive advantages or emerging areas of priority”.
They are: Resources technology and critical minerals processing, food and beverage, medical products, defence, space and of course — drum roll please — recycling and clean energy.
As if tens of billions of dollars being forced into so-called — actually, very dirty — “clean energy” isn’t enough, we still need a little bit more.
You really couldn’t make this stuff up. That is to say, you, as in a normal, rational — and, mostly, taxpaying — person couldn’t make this stuff up.
It could only be made up by a Canberra bureaucrat in combination with assorted ideologues and the main chancers and assorted spivs that throng around the taxpayer trough — and then sold to gullible and stupid politicians.
“Space”. Do we have an established competitive advantage in this? If so, don’t tell the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians and a couple of dozen more.
Or is “Space” an “emerging area of priority”, so critical to the Australia of today and tomorrow?
Ah, Defence.
Again, like so-called “clean energy”, not exactly an area starved from being stuffed with taxpayer dollars.
Most strikingly, is that mother-of-all utterly mindless boondoggles — the $100bn, ending up who knows where, being forced-fed into Adelaide to build those early 20th century “tribute” subs.
Maybe, somebody real smart can get some of these new dollars to unite the two spaces of Defence and, well, Space — so the subs when they finally arrive around 2050 can operate both under the sea and above us in, well, space.
It is the first two nominated, though, that perfectly and best capture the utter inanity of this stupidity and the broader, stunning and absolute failure of this government and government more generally in Australia right now and also — I have to bleakly predict — right through the 21st century.
Yes, we have — correction, had — clear competitive advantages in “resources technology and minerals processing, along with food and beverage”.
We’ve got some of the best resources deposits in the world. Indeed, the best iron ore; the best coal — both sorts, energy and met; and among the best uranium.
How come we aren’t turning more of that iron ore and met coal into steel?
How come we aren’t turning more of that energy coal into electricity — and all the refining and smelting, otherwise known as “minerals processing”, that depends on cheap and reliable power?
How come we aren’t turning that uranium into enriched forms? Oh, right, we’re not even allowed to dig it up and ship it off raw so others can do that and indeed use it to generate electricity.
There was a time when we actually though it was a good idea to do some of these things.
That instead of selling bauxite at around (now) $45 a tonne, it was a better idea to turn it into alumina and sell it for around $370 a tonne, or even better, into aluminium and sell it for $2350 a tonne.
We’ve still got four aluminium smelters but they are all hanging on by the skin of their teeth thanks to the insanity of forcing the closure of coal-fired power stations and force-feeding useless — what’s that fake word? Oh yes — “clean” energy into wrecking the grid.
The PM has made his inanity perfectly clear by committing to a gas-fired power station smack in the middle of one of the best energy coal fields in the world.
It sort of captures it perfectly. Is there any surprise that all the manufacturing has gone to China which is more than happy to provide its manufacturers with plenty of cheap coal-fired power?
Much the same goes with food and beverage. Pray tell PM and minister, do we have a competitive advantage in these or are they areas of priority?
Well, we used to have a competitive advantage before we gave it all away in mountains of red, green and black tape, along with escalating power prices and employment rigidities.
So, now the government is going to make a pathetic attempt to force-feed some local processing, instead of getting out of the way, slashing all the tape, and doing its job to ensure cheap power like President Trump has done in the US.
One critical starting point would be to mandate a portion of all gas to stay in Australia at a world-competitive price — just like WA and the Victoria of a long, long, long time ago, used to do.
As I say, the $1.5bn is a pathetic waste of time. Just thank goodness it is so pathetic.
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Originally published as Terry McCrann: Why the pathetic $1.5b handout is a joke