Peta Credlin: Labor’s net zero fantasy will wreck our future
A power system that is neither affordable nor reliable is inevitable after the lies peddled for the best part of two decades by both sides of politics, writes Peta Credlin.
Opinion
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When it comes to energy costs and climate change, too many Australians have come to believe the lies peddled for the best part of two decades by both sides of politics. We’ve been told that there’s a climate emergency so therefore the economy must be decarbonised at breakneck speed.
But that there’s no need for worry because doing so will actually save us money, as wind and solar (supposedly) are now the cheapest way to generate electricity.
Peak deception was Labor’s pre-election modelling purporting to show that meeting its emissions reduction targets would create 604,000 jobs by 2050, and spur $76 billion in investment, as well as reduce household power bills by $275 a year by 2025.
Last week, it was revealed that some customers’ power bills had soared by 45 per cent from July 1, to cover the costs of building new generation and infrastructure, plus the rising cost of gas.
The reality in NSW is that all the big three electricity retailers have just increased their average charges by over 20 per cent, or about $500 per household per year.
This is what happens when our power grid is run to reduce emissions rather than to produce affordable and reliable electricity.
Also last week, it was revealed that the cost of meeting the Albanese government’s net zero target, including 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 with 82 per cent of electricity from renewable sources, would be $1.5 trillion – that’s TRILLION – within the current decade, rising to $9 trillion by 2060.
To put these truly gargantuan figures into perspective, Australia’s annual GDP is currently about $2 trillion. So achieving the 2050 emissions reduction – which both sides of politics have signed up to – will cost about four years of our total economic production. And achieving Labor’s 2030 target will cost almost one year of production within the current decade.
What’s more, these cost estimates aren’t from sceptics trying to scare Australians out of the policies supposedly needed to combat climate change.
They were published this week by an expert climate advocacy group, Net Zero Australia, a collaboration of interdisciplinary teams from the universities of Melbourne and Queensland, plus Princeton University in the US, led by Professor Robin Batterham, a former chief scientist.
He says that the magnitude of what’s necessary and desirable (at least in his mind) would be “in line with the US-led Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II”.
Labor has now legislated to enshrine its 2030 target in law, but making something legally mandatory doesn’t mean that it will happen in practice.
As the former boss of Snowy Hydro, Paul Broad, said recently, achieving Labor’s emissions goals “is not just looking impossible, it IS impossible, it cannot be done”.
He said that we are “blindly charging on, simply because of political ideology” and that “to suggest that all of this is going to be at a price point that reflects past prices is absolutely false”.
Other experts, such as former Energy Security Board chair Kerry Schott, Engie Australia boss Rik De Buyserie, and Origin Energy boss Frank Calabria essentially agreed with Broad, only in more restrained language, doubtless due to the fear of retribution from a minister and a government that’s still insisting that the impossible is achievable.
Meanwhile, an Ipsos poll, showing that cost of living should trump climate, highlights the government’s political quandary.
Concern about cost of living is now at the highest level in the past decade.
Yet even though it’s the cost of power that’s rising fastest, largely driven by climate policy, Ipsos found that 65 per cent believe Australia should be “doing more to address climate change” and 61 per cent say that Australia should be “a global leader in emissions reduction”.
Go figure.
When reality collides with the myth assiduously created by weak or fearmongering politicians over decades, sooner or later a crisis ensues. Even people inclined to subscribe to the “need to do something about climate” view now think we face a slow-motion train wreck – a power system that is neither affordable nor reliable but that is inevitable under current government policy.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is slowly trying to draw attention to the looming disaster but is still not prepared clearly to state the obvious, at least not yet: namely; that no more coal-fired power stations can close until there’s a reliable alternative, that new gas fields need to be developed as a matter of extreme urgency, and that – if achieving net zero really is necessary – the only way to get there without wrecking our prosperity is via nuclear energy.
WILL SEARCH FOR NEXT LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD BE THE SAME OLD STORY?
With peace and freedom under its biggest challenge in many decades, it’s more important than ever that the leader of the free world be at the top of his game. With Russia continuing to pulverise Ukrainian cities and the Ukrainian counter-attack only inching forward, NATO’s inability to agree on a timetable for admitting Ukraine, or suitable preconditions for entry, was disappointing to say the least.
Present for the meeting in Lithuania, the best our PM could offer was a paltry 30 extra Bushmaster armoured cars when we have about 1000 rusting away in a yard near Brisbane airport.
But as President Joe Biden demonstrated while inspecting a guard of honour with the King, not only is the US leader a very shaky old man but he often looks like he doesn’t even know where he is. No American president should need cue cards for a catch-up with the British PM in the garden at Downing Street but Biden did. Worse still. when he inspected the guard of honour alongside King Charles at Windsor Castle, the contrast between these two mature-age men was stark; the King, fit and engaged at 74 while the President, 80, shuffled along gingerly, often had a blank stare fixed on his face and needed to be prodded to keep moving.
Given how troubling the world is, is this the best America can do? Yet who else could the Democrats run? It certainly can’t be Kamala Harris, the vacuous Vice President only picked, as even Biden admitted, because she was a woman of colour. And more plausible and capable Democrats can’t really campaign while the President says he’s running again.
And it’s not much better on the other side, with the admittedly still-energetic 77-year-old Donald Trump seemingly with a deadlock on the Republican nomination, despite threatening to abandon Ukraine and despite the presence of a better-qualified rival in Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Are we really headed for a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024?
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