Peta Credlin: Rationale on appliance ban is pure gaslighting

It won’t be long before other Labor governments across Australia will follow Victoria’s lead and ban gas from new dwellings as part of their climate change crusade which has infected all parts of our lives, writes Peta Credlin.

Don’t get too attached to your trusty gas appliances, your cooktop, gas hot water system or gas heating because, if Labor has its way, these will soon be banned as part of the crusade against climate change.

In Victoria, gas connections will be banned in new residential dwellings from the beginning of next year.

And because Daniel Andrews’ Victoria is the template for Labor governments right around the country, similar action can be expected everywhere.

Indeed, a few hours after last Friday’s announcement, the NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns refused to rule it out when pushed by the media, even though banning gas appliances will only further drive up costs to householders.

Plus, at least in the short term, also drive up emissions because gas has roughly half the emissions of the coal that still provides about 70 per cent of our electricity. This is just the latest instalment in the energy insanity gripping the country.

The Longford Gas Conditioning Plant in Longford, Gippsland. Gas has roughly half the emissions of the coal that still provides about 70 per cent of Australia’s electricity. Picture: AAP Image/Joe Castro

In making this absurd announcement, the Victorian government claimed that $1000 would be shaved from household energy bills each year.

But this is even less believable than the Albanese government’s fantasy pre-election promise to cut power bills by $275 per household per year, which was at least accompanied by spurious modelling.

If an all-electric household really is going to cut costs by $1000 a year, why did the government need to make it mandatory? Picture: NCA NewsWire/Kelly Barnes

If an all-electric household really is going to cut costs by $1000 a year, why did the government need to make it mandatory, given that rational householders would do it anyway?

In fact, the consumer organisation Choice puts the annualised cost of instant gas hot water at up to $400, compared to at least $650 for instant electric hot water.

What’s more, says Choice, gas-boosted solar hot water is roughly half the annualised cost, AND half the emissions, of electric-boosted solar hot water.

So what the hell is Labor on about?

Anything that has to be forced on consumers, rather than chosen on the basis of price and quality, is never cheaper.

Loy Yang, a brown coal fired, steam generating power station in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria. The Andrews government is only concerned about emissions, not price Picture: Stuart McEvoy/Australian

In this case, all that really concerns the Andrews government is emissions, not price.

And yes, if the electricity supply does eventually become 80 or 90 per cent renewable, as the government wants, emissions might ultimately decline.

But reliability will decline too, given that there is currently no technically feasible and economically viable means of firming renewable (intermittent) power, other than the gas the Victorian government is so intent of demonising.

Just imagine being able to have a hot shower only on a windy day when the turbines are turning, or being able to cook only during daylight hours when the solar power is on, and not at night when it’s off.

That’s how crazy this is getting.

The MD of Seeley International, Australia’s biggest airconditioning and gas heating appliance manufacturer with brands like Breezair and Braemar, said on Friday that the Victorian government’s “foolish and shortsighted ban on gas … will only push emissions higher and increase the risk of blackouts”.

Airconditioning manufacturer Jon Seeley has been a rare voice against the omissions obsession in his denunciation of Victoria’s announcement on gas appliances. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Jon Seeley demanded that the government “stop being dishonest with Victorians … (and) stop denying the simple science that right now, in Victorian homes, electricity from brown coal is four times more emissions intensive than natural gas”.

Seeley said the government was using “the cover of a righteous environmental pursuit … to spread mistruths and lies” and that the government’s claim that the gas sector represented 17 per cent of Victoria’s emissions “ignored the fact that residential gas (the focus of this ban) represents less than 2 per cent of emissions”.

These days, it’s a rare business chief who dares speak out against the emissions obsession, so Seeley’s denunciation testifies to the general alarm about this extraordinary measure.

Words can hardly do justice to the control freakery, the ideological idiocy and the sheer intellectual dishonesty of the Daniel Andrews government.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that most of the population of Victoria is suffering a form of Stockholm syndrome as hostages in a party-state under a boss who’s got the whole place in his pocket.

But unless people wake up to the folly of running a power system to reduce emissions rather than deliver affordable and reliable energy, this madness will soon spread across the entire country.

DON’T MAKE US STRANGERS IN OUR OWN LAND

Have you flown from Gadigal (Sydney) to Naarm (Melbourne) lately? Or maybe to Aotearoa (New Zealand)? Certainly, if you’ve landed anywhere recently (except on Rex) your crew would have acknowledged the traditional owners of the lands on which we “live, work and fly”.

Not long ago, Qantas crews were referencing NAIDOC week as well. But if a fuss is to be made about one group’s special time, why not Easter week, or Ramadan, or the Passover, or Diwali?

As you may have heard, about 10 days ago in Queensland, a woman was attacked by a dingo. Only, if you’d heard it on Channel 9, the incident took place on K’gari and involved a wongari, because not only has Annastacia Palaszczuk renamed “Fraser Island” but, in our enthusiasm for all things Indigenous, “dingo”, the term that Sydney Aboriginals had used for our native dog (and that the settlers then adopted), was replaced by a local name, even though this practice will end up giving “dingoes” a multiplicity of different names, given there were well over 300 different languages spoken by local peoples in 1788.

The Aboriginal flag. Picture: Kevin Farmer

I’m all for recognition, I think most Australians are, but when does “recognition” become “replacement”, and non-Aboriginal Australians made to feel like strangers in their own land?

Welcomes to country, originally a nice gesture from the local elders when VIP guests turned up to Indigenous communities, have multiplied into the ubiquitous acknowledgements of country that now feature in everything from the opening of the school day to most official meetings. Often enough, when there are numerous speakers, each one of them will feel the need individually to acknowledge country, usually in an ever more extravagant way. Yet how can the traditional owners be fulsomely acknowledged without the inference that the land belongs to some more than to others, and that everyone who’s come since 1788 is here under sufferance?

Then there’s the now ever-present flying of the Aboriginal flag, equally with the national flag, as if the flag of some of us matters as much as the flag of all of us.

And, most recently, there’s this shift to use Indigenous names in news bulletins, advertisements or airline schedules, jointly or in substitution for the names we’re all familiar with.

All of this has happened by stealth. There has been no government announcement. No national debate. Just a whole lot of organisations, from local councils to surf lifesaving clubs and the national broadcaster, that have made the decision for us.

But there will soon be a good way for everyday Australians to have their say on what’s happened without their consent, by voting a resounding “no” to the Indigenous Voice, and thereby sending a clear message to everyone in authority: that we are a country of one people where, in Bob Hawke’s own words, there is “no hierarchy of descent” and “no privilege of origin”.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm