Piers Akerman: Senate rethink may be needed after a week of appalling behaviour and ignorance

The behaviour of former Labor senator Fatima Payman and former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe should lead to meaningful reforms being demanded by the voting public, writes Piers Akerman.

The 2024 federal parliamentary year closed in a mire of ugliness and appallingly reckless ignorance.

The behaviour of former Labor senator Fatima Payman and former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe should lead to meaningful reforms being demanded by the voting public.

However, the gutless Green-Labor Albanese government senators certainly would not agree to any reform referendum, and nor would Greens and Independent senators.

Even Coalition senators would be reluctant to support any decrease in the size of the Senate.

When the Constitution was written, a house of review based on state representation was arguably good for the checks and balances needed to prevent the population centres of Sydney and Melbourne dominating procedure but times have changed, the Senate isn’t seen as the states’ chamber, and with the advances in communication and transport technologies, the old arguments need to be re-examined.

If Payman and Thorpe believe their antics appeal to sizeable constituencies in Western Australia and Victoria, respectively, then the nation is in serious trouble.

Senators Fatima Payman and Lidia Thorpe. Pictures: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

As abhorrent as their adolescent antics may be, they pale by comparison with the utter ignorance of Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen.

Fresh from attending the latest of the UN’s useless COP jamborees, Bowen doubled down on all his previous nonsensical utterances about carbon dioxide emissions and nuclear energy to repeat the fatuous claim that Australia could become a global renewable energy super power if only more billions were spent subsidising hopelessly inefficient and unreliable wind and solar factories and purchasing even bigger batteries.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

This whole fantasy is based on the fallacy that climate change is entirely due to the minute human contribution to the 0.04 per cent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

There has been absolutely no scientific evidence produced anywhere to prove that CO2 is the principal driver of climate change.

The disastrous rush to close fossil fuel production in Australia has real consequences as witnessed during the not unusual or unseasonal warm weather experienced last week.

NSW Premier Chris Minns had to warn householders to restrict the use of their electrically-powered domestic appliances, airconditioners, pool pumps, refrigerators and stoves because a number of coal-fired power stations were out for routine maintenance.

Any intelligent person would understand that coal-fired power plants are critical to the provision of baseload energy needed to keep electrons racing through the grid to where they are needed.

The inefficient sun still sets each evening, its rays are even blocked by cloud, and last year it provided about 16 per cent of the nation’s energy.

The wind doesn’t always blow, and managed to provide about 12 per cent of the nation’s primary energy supply.

Hydro produced 6 per cent.

Like it or not, coal is the solution, not the problem.

Former ABC journalist Chris Uhlmann presented a factual documentary, The Real Cost of Net Zero, for Sky last week, It is now available on YouTube. Bowen and his Cabinet colleagues should view it over the summer break or face real extinction at the next election.

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