Piers Akerman: Matt Kean’s energy activism a threat to power reliability
Pulling the plug on the Eraring plant — one of the state’s largest electricity sources — is the latest damaging folly from woke virtue-signalling politician Matt Kean, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
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The factional ratbaggery which won green-left Liberal Matt Kean into the powerful positions of Treasurer and Energy Minister needs to be unpicked before it further wrecks NSW.
Collaborating with Origin Energy to prematurely pull the plug on one of the state’s largest electricity sources, the Eraring plant in the Hunter, is the latest damaging folly from this woke virtue-signalling politician. Kean appears to embody all that’s wrong with the NSW division of the Liberals.
As an indication of how out of touch he is with all but a tiny but increasingly shrill minority, his thoughts on the direction the party should take must be carefully read and – if the party had any guts – rejected.
In a gushing interview with “our ABC”, Kean said he believed that communities “care about issues like climate change, they are concerned about the rights of trans and same-sex couples, for example, and they want to have those rights protected, those communities listened to and that is what the Liberals in those areas I know are trying to do”.
“Take, for example, Trent Zimmerman,” he went on.
“We wouldn’t have a net-zero commitment had it not been for the advocacy for people like Trent Zimmerman and other moderates.
“So, too, did we see people like Trent Zimmerman, Dave Sharma, Fiona Martin stand up for the rights of trans people and same-sex people, and put their careers on the line. I think it is courageous and that is what those communities want to see.”
Maybe a few inner-urban communities where the ABC staff live – those suburbs which reject coal and gas and nuclear power and which have difficulty deciding which personal pronoun best describes their sexual identity.
But not the communities which pay the bulk of the ABC’s bloated staff salaries, volunteer to join the defence forces or supply the nurses and police and SES or rural fire service men and women.
Out of touch just doesn’t cover it.
Closing Eraring will inevitably drive up energy prices and reduce the reliability. Energy management is all about shutting down energy-consuming manufacturing and limiting essential power to private homes.
Just look at the example set by the European nations which embraced the climate crisis mantra and now find they are being blackmailed by Russia which provides them with gas.
Ask the Ukrainians who will lose a chunk of their nation to Russia because Germany and Italy, in particular, have already softened their stance to Putin’s encroachment on Ukraine.
Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor has managed to oversee a reduction in energy prices and maintain reliability. Kean will ensure that these essentials are eroded as baseload supply is cut, with his approval.
In return, he said taxpayers will purchase a big battery but it will only have the capacity to store a quarter of the power Eraring produces.
As Taylor told the ABC’s most woke commentator Patricia Karvelas on Friday: “We’ve got 2800 megawatts leaving the market. This is a two-hour 700 megawatt battery. That’s a quarter – it’s simple maths, Patricia.”
Kean must believe, like the credibility-compromised MP for Warringah Zali Steggall and her equally deluded supporters, that batteries produce power. They don’t.
As Taylor says, we have seen the dynamic of coal-powered plant closures in the past in Hazelwood down in Victoria. We saw it with Northern in South Australia where energy companies think they can take big pieces of capacity out of the market and not replace them.
That will increase prices and increase their profits. But this is a utility service which every Australian buys and it’s crucial that we have affordable, reliable energy.
Origin is hardly a responsible community player when it is prepared to sacrifice real jobs like those at the Tomago aluminium smelter in the Hunter to drive up its own profits.
Social responsibility is all the go in the woke business community but how does unemployment fit the “socially responsible” mantra?
Geriatric band Midnight Oil will play the Byron Bay Bluesfest festival in April but in keeping with their climate activism, will it have to be all acoustic?
After all, how could a band priding itself on its agitprop song sheet perform Rising Seas when its amplifiers are powered by oil and gas-generated electricity?
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