Call for renewables fires up need to keep coal power stations

As Labor, Teals and Greens scream to close cleaner black coal power stations without providing any reliable replacements, Australia should consider all forms of energy.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton is seeking an intelligent conversation on the role new age technologies may play in Australia’s energy mix.

To paraphrase the Irish joke (no offence intended), Canberra is the wrong place to begin searching.

Not only is the ACT the most woke capital in the nation (having just decriminalised heroin, cocaine and speed, it may also be the dopiest) but the FIFO Teals, Greens and ideologically-blinkered Labor MPs aren’t lifting its average IQ one iota.

Being the heaviest subscribers to the Guardian, Nine Media and the ABC, the Left’s print and broadcast services) means they just aren’t up with what’s happening in the real world.

Germany, where the Greens first won parliamentary seats, is dismantling a wind farm to make way for the expansion of an open-pit lignite, brown coal, mine to provide reliable base load energy.

That’s because former leader Angela Merkel’s illogical and disgraceful over-reliance on unreliable so-called renewables and scandalous dependence on Russian gas has left the German Green-Coalition government in the cold dark as winter approaches.

Here, Labor, the Teals and Greens are screaming to close cleaner black coal power stations without providing any reliable replacement energy sources.

The ABC’s Patricia Karvelas, may have been reading from Labor’s daily issued “talking points” when she scolded Dutton Friday morning for merely suggesting that there is a need to include nuclear energy in any discussion about meeting Australia’s power crisis.

Patricia Karvelas. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

Peter Dutton. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

Ignoring the fact (as checked by the ABC’s own Fact Check) that Labor didn’t inherit a trillion dollars of debt, Karvelas carped that small modular nuclear reactors were nowhere in service and that nuclear was the most expensive of all energy sources.

To parrot those same inaccurate government lines is to ignore the small reactors aboard nuclear submarines and the massive subsidies and the tens of billions of dollars that Labor’s proposed 28,000 kilometres of new high voltage green energy transmission lines through farms and national parks will cost.

Maybe she should get her information from someone other than the smirking, smug Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen and talk to some real experts.

Dutton made the point in his Budget reply that power prices during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years rose on average by 12.9 per cent per year and that over nine years of Coalition government they rose by an average of 0.3 of one per cent per year.

She didn’t want to acknowledge another fact – during the election campaign Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised on 97 occasions that your bills would be reduced by $275.

Instead of going down by $275, as promised, Treasurer Jim Chalmers Budget calls for increases of more than 56 per cent over the next two years, with increases to your gas bill of more than 44 per cent.

A coal-fired power station in the La Trobe Valley. Picture: Michael Hall

The Labor, Green, Teal majority might take heed of another news item from Germany last week which stated that four separate century-old companies declared insolvency in a 24-hour period as energy costs and inflation continued to spiral across Europe.

Germany has the biggest economy in the European Union, with a GDP of over 3.57 trillion euros in 2021. Its position as the fourth largest economy in the world is based on exports of high-quality manufactured goods including vehicle construction, electrical industry, engineering and chemical industry.

Hobbled by the policies of its Green-tainted government, it stands to lose its status to China, which is rapidly overtaking over its automotive, electrical and engineering industries and is not bound by any net zero fantasies as it builds more coal and nuclear power plants.

The president of the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI), Markus Steilemann, said that the country may become an “industrial museum” if circumstances continue to worsen.

Australia is in a worse position as almost all heavy industry has already been exported to China to the cheers of the Greens and Teals.

Labor with its hard-Left adherence to insane Green policies is leading the nation headlong towards the abyss.

A handful of Labor’s traditional supporters understand the catastrophe facing the nation unless pragmatic action is taken.

Dan Walton, the personable national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, is among them.

As the representative of 72,000 workers across the nation, Dan knows that without reliable, affordable energy, they will be out of work.

Further, when we spoke, he pointed out that unless the Labor government can ensure that householders and businesses have affordable power, the Albanese government will be unable to deliver on its big initiatives.

Like this nuclear power station in northeast China, Australia should consider all forms of energy. Picture: Zuma Press

All forms of energy must be considered if those big ticket aspirational goals are to be met, including nuclear, otherwise they will remain dreams for dreamers.

To add insult to the people who provide the muscle to what remains of the power industry, the Albanese-Chalmers Budget also provided funds to the anti-gas, anti-coal environmental protest movement.

So, as your power bills continue to soar to stratospheric heights as summer air conditioning bills kick in, just contemplate the indescribably blind, deaf and above all ignorant Labor government in Canberra.