Piers Akerman: Hung parliament fuelled by lunatic energy activism is a nightmare sensible voters want to avoid
The electorate must get this federal election right as the damage a Labor or minority government can cause cannot be contemplated, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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No thoughtful voter could possibly vote for another Albanese Labor-Green government given its past, present and future plans.
The prospect of a hung parliament with Green-voting Teals supporting Labor is beyond a nightmare. Australians’ standard of living collapse is entirely due to the policies inflicted upon them by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his cohort of activist ministers.
Without a doubt, Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has caused the most damage with his insane obsession to make the nation a green, renewable energy super power. No country in the world has achieved this economic fantasy.
Yet Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Albanese keep maintaining that this impossible dream is one of a re-elected Labor government’s key goals. They have thrown tens of billions in subsidies at companies claiming to have discovered magic formulae using renewable energy to produce green hydrogen to power green industries.
Like latter-day alchemists striving to turn lead into gold, they have all failed. Their only achievement has been to pose with smirking Labor politicians and pocket your money.
Green technology projects are falling like Louie the Fly after a hit of Mortein. Far from Australia being the “green hydrogen capital of the world” as Bowen crowed last September, vanity projects in NSW, Queensland, WA and South Australia have all closed their doors.
Pardon the schadenfreude but it was difficult not to smile when Zen Energy, the renewables outfit developed by economist Ross Garnaut, slumped because of a lack of wind.
The CSIRO’s go-to cost analysts, GenCost, don’t factor in wind droughts or cloudy days as they blatantly promote the government’s anti-gas and anti-nuclear agenda.
Wherever countries have tried to implement wind and solar, electricity prices went up and the stability of the grid went down.
There is the serious possibility that a handful of seats held by the Greens, Teals and Labor activists will be decided on the energy issue.
The climate extremists, with their catastrophic claims, should be reminded that the petrochemicals derived from the very fossil fuels they condemn have been responsible for the greatest improvements in the human condition since the development of literacy. Their benefits are undeniable and the negligible questionable downside may have been to lift the global temperature by a fraction of a degree.
As US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said recently, lifespans have almost doubled because of the chemicals derived from petroleum products.
Almost all of the world’s citizens have been lifted out of grinding poverty. Modern medicine, telecommunications, planes, trains and automobiles have been a boon to civilisation thanks to petrochemicals.
The Albanese government joins with the UN in punishing the majority of the global population with its net-zero goal. Because of this baseless insanity, more than two billion people are denied the benefits of reliable energy.
They cook and heat their homes by burning wood or cow dung. The indoor pollution created from this alone is estimated to kill over two million people a year.
Unreliable, ultra-expensive power is the appalling legacy of the Albanese government and it has indicated it will not deviate from this lunatic path.
Coalition leader Peter Dutton’s budget reply speech was a clarion call to common sense. His address was based on a realistic appraisal of the disastrous state of the nation and he outlined a realistic set of policies to address Labor’s ongoing failings.
The electorate must get this right as the damage a Labor or minority government cannot be contemplated.
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