Peta Credlin: Stage set for new chapter in long-running climate and energy wars

The next election will be a contest about a subject that matters, because almost nothing is more central to the daily life of a modern economy than reliable and affordable electricity, writes Peta Credlin.

On Friday, the federal opposition released modelling claiming that the cost of the Albanese government’s energy policies would be at least $642bn by 2030, or nearly double the maximum estimated cost of acquiring our nuclear submarine fleet, and some five times the government’s own current estimates.

That’s some $25,000 for every single Australian.

The stage is now set for a new chapter in the long-running climate and energy wars that have been turbocharged by the re-election of Donald Trump as US president on a platform of: “drill, baby, drill”, pulling out (again) of the Paris climate accords, and declaring man-made climate change is largely a “hoax”.

Over the life of the Albanese government, hardly a week has passed without Energy Minister Chris Bowen proclaiming that wind and solar provide the cheapest forms of power. And there’s certainly a superficial plausibility to this assertion, given that the sun and the wind do indeed come free.

Yet converting this to electricity requires solar panels and wind turbines, and they’re certainly not free. And getting the electricity to homes and workplaces requires extra transmission lines, and they’re not free either. And as for the storage or the alternative generation to keep the lights on when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining; well, that too, is hardly without cost.

Environment Minister Chris Bowen with solar panels. Picture: NewsWire / David Swift

The killer question that the government can’t dodge is simple. If renewables are as cheap as they tell us, why are our power bills going up and up the more of Labor’s “free” power we have in the system?

Prior to the 2022 election, the ALP published modelling purporting to show that a grid with 82 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources would, somehow, cut power bills by $275 per household per year, even though – as Bowen declared shortly after the election – this would require the installation of 22,000 solar panels every single day, and 40 large wind turbines every single month for seven whole years; plus the erection of at least 10,000km of new transmission lines; an energy transition that even he admitted would be the biggest transformation since the industrial revolution.

Labor’s energy modelling required the erection of at least 10,000km of new transmission lines. Picture: NewsWire/Aaron Francis

Labor’s modelling claimed that moving to net zero would create more than 600,000 new jobs, even though it would also destroy nearly all the existing high-paid jobs in the coal- and gas-fired power that, in 2022, produced about 80 per cent of our electricity.

And that’s before we factor in the economic suicide of losing all the jobs in the mining of coal and the extraction of gas that, most years, are two of our three biggest exports.

And the billions in budget revenue that comes with those exports – gone as well!

Unsurprisingly, given all this, a steadily increasing proportion of wind and solar power (now about 30 per cent of our total electricity) has so far led to an increase in household power bills of about $1000 a year and coincided with local power prices roughly double those in the United States – which achieved energy self-sufficiency under the previous Trump administration via increased oil extraction and gas fracking.

Eventually, in response to increasing demands to provide an overall cost for the government’s energy transition and based on the CSIRO’s “gen-cost” (or cost of generation only) modelling, Bowen said the total cost to 2030 was just $122bn – even though, before the election, the ALP had separately released material claiming that new transmission lines alone would cost up to $80bn.

Even then, Bowen’s figure still amounted to about an extra $5000 per Australian man, woman and child over just seven years.

This was always implausible – and especially after the Net Zero Australia study, released last year by three universities and including Australia’s former chief scientist, Professor Robin Batterham.

The study concluded that achieving net zero – across all sectors of the economy: transport, agriculture, manufacturing and construction, as well as energy – would cost up to $9 trillion by 2060, and up to $1.5 trillion even by 2030.

The Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Picture: AFP

Building the up-to-seven 1000-megawatt nuclear power plants, on existing coal plant sites, that the Coalition has said are needed to get to net zero, while also keeping the lights on, won’t be cheap either. And it can’t happen over night.

Yet the United Arab Emirates has just brought to full operation a giant new 5400 megawatt nuclear power plant costing $30bn. Based on an existing Korean design, it took less than 15 years from conception to conclusion. And it is now providing up to a quarter of the Emirates’ total electricity.

The Coalition has promised to provide its nuclear costing well before the election.

Compared to the costs of the 2000 megawatt Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro scheme – originally estimated at $2bn and taking five years, but now blown out to $12bn and a decade-plus – these are likely to be both reasonable and plausible.

What’s now clear is that the next election will be a real contest, based on strong evidence, about a subject that really matters, because almost nothing is more central to the daily life of a modern economy than reliable and affordable electricity.

SHOULD SUPER FUNDS BE GIVING OUR MONEY TO THE VOICE AND THE CFMEU?

In recent times, banks have always been the “bad” financial institutions. They are often contrasted with the “good” industry super funds, which are supposedly run wholly for their members’ benefit; and not according to the whims of the former union leaders and Labor MPs who sit on their boards.

Only now it turns out that one of the biggest industry funds, Cbus – which is 20 per cent controlled by the thuggish CFMEU construction union, and chaired by former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan – has failed to pay beneficiaries of death or sickness benefits their money on time.

Some 11,000 members or their widows have reportedly been waiting over a year for payments averaging over $100,000 each. The excuse given is that the fund contracted out making these payments to an overseas agency that’s let them down.

Cbus chair Wayne Swan. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

The prudential regulator has now taken Cbus to court. Picture: NewsWire/Glenn Hunt

The prudential regulator has now taken Cbus to court because it ignored repeated warnings to lift its game to the industry standard of 60 days for making payouts.

Never forget the money in these super funds is OUR money. It is part of our salary that our employers have put into our super account during our working lives. It belongs to us, and we shouldn’t have to wait months and months to access it.

It’s not like these super funds wait to use our money, is it?

Last year, the CFMEU received some $4m in payments from industry super funds. As well, industry super funds’ large shareholdings in public companies have coincided with the growth of “woke capitalism” as they use their vote bloc to dictate their agenda to corporate boards.

A good example is the big donations from super funds to the PM’s failed Voice campaign.

A few well-publicised instances of banks mistreating their customers produced a royal commission. If banks can be guilty of putting their corporate self-interest ahead of that of their customers, why is it assumed industry super funds are inherently paragons of virtue?

Super funds will soon be trousering 12 per cent of every worker’s wage and deserve no less regulatory scrutiny than banks.

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