Piers Akerman: Believers of renewables fantasy are dragging us into energy crisis

The Albanese Labor government is waltzing the nation into disasters on multiple fronts — energy, constitutional change, economic management — but the electorate is reluctant to admit it voted for a dog, writes Piers Akerman.

The Albanese Labor government is waltzing the nation into disasters on multiple fronts — energy, constitutional change, economic management — but the electorate is reluctant to admit it voted for a dog.

The great strategist Napoleon Bonaparte is attributed with uttering the pithy piece of advice “never interrupt when your enemy is making a mistake” and perhaps that’s why the Opposition hasn’t been slamming the government as vigorously as its supporters might wish.

As it happens, there are a few dyed-in-the-wool Labor figures prepared to call it out, such as Jennie George, a former president of the ACTU and a former MP for the federal seat of Throsby now renamed Whitlam, who still lives in her former electorate.

Ms George is no slouch and no ideologue either, unlike some of her union boss successors.

Her seat covered part of Wollongong and Kembla Grange, which once contained massive steelmaking and coal mining operations essential to the defence of the nation as well as providing livelihoods to thousands of steel workers, miners and stevedores.

NSW Treasurer Matt Kean (far left), Federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen (second left), NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet (centre), and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (third right) tour the site of the new Waratah Super Battery project, at the former Munmorah Power Station in Colongra, NSW. Picture: AAP

Unlike the current crop of Labor MPs who wouldn’t know a blast furnace from a backyard pizza oven, George made a point of understanding the workers she represented.

Now her pungent but fact-laden commentary on the real energy crisis Australia faces is always essential reading for realists if not to the cloth-eared clowns in Canberra and on Macquarie Street who think that electric cars running on so-called renewable energy must be mandated.

Treasurer and Minister for Energy Matt Kean plugging in his electric vehicle at the Park & Ride car park in Narrabeen. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Former Labor MP and first female ACTU president Jennie George.

(As an act of kindness to virtue-signalling motorists, I should mention here that in the US, Tesla is recalling 362,800 vehicles equipped with its advanced driver assistance feature following a safety warning notice from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday. Don’t say you weren’t told.)

With her usual thoroughness, George last Monday succinctly noted in an article for The Australian that NSW is on the precipice of a major energy shortage with the shelving of a liquefied natural gas terminal at Newcastle, the closure of Liddell power station on April 28 (there goes 10 per cent of the state’s power), the delay in opening of the planned Kurri Kurri gas peaking plant until at least December 2028 (don’t hang your hat on that one), and the planned closure of the Eraring power plant (a further 25 per cent of NSW’s energy) before the end of 2026.

NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean is as much to blame for the hysteria which has led to the politics behind the failed energy policies as the federal Greens leader Adam Bandt or the federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen.

There should have been a Biblical admonition — put not your faith in batteries — which Kean might have noted.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after a tour of the Waratah Super Battery project site. Picture: AAP Image

His much-hyped Waratah Super Battery which was promised to be operational before Eraring’s closure will provide a storage capacity of 1400 megawatt hours with an active power capacity of 700 megawatts, giving it about two hours running time at a yet-to-be-disclosed cost.

The infrastructure upgrades will soak up at least $180m and the government won’t say how much more it will be. But you can safely add another $300m or $400m given that South Australia’s Tesla-supplied smaller battery cost $200m.

Origin Energy's Eraring power station.

Liddell power station.

Think $500m-$600m for this Green turkey.

Because of Labor and the Greens’ support for the net-zero insanity there hasn’t been much criticism of the wacky “renewables plus battery storage” policy nor of the rapidly receding prospect of any commercial green hydrogen plant being brought online.

The sooner more realists support Jennie George’s realistic appraisal of the energy situation, the quicker the Australian economy will be rescued from the delusional green assassins.