Piers Akerman: Who nerve-gassed our common sense?

IN name and deeds, the engineer-general Sir John Monash is precisely the right person to invoke when seeking a solution to the existential energy crisis facing Australia, Piers Akerman writes.

IN name and deeds, the engineer-general Sir John Monash is precisely the right person to invoke when seeking a solution to the existential energy crisis facing Australia.

Those members of the Liberal Party seeking to tackle this monstrous issue who have chosen to label their group the Monash Forum honour the great man.

In attacking their decision, the RSL and Monash’s des­cendants are just plain wrong and here’s why. Sir John Monash was, first and foremost, an engineer, and it was the independence of thinking and the organisation skills he learnt in that field which contributed to his greatness as a general in World War I.

It was that independence of thought and demand for precision that led him to contribute the innovative strategies which not only enabled him to turn the tide of war against the Germans on the Western Front, but also to bring about the electrification of great swaths of rural Victoria in the post-war years.

Sir John Monash. Picture: Australian War Memorial

Charles Bean, the official Australian war historian who was not initially a Monash supporter, later noted that ­Monash was more effective the higher he rose within the Army, where he had greater capacity to use his skill for meticulous planning and ­organisation, and to innovate in the area of technology and tactics.

On August 8, 1918, the ­Battle of Amiens was launched. The allied attack was spearheaded by the Australian Corps under Monash, who gave the capture of enemy ­artillery as a key objective in the first phase in order to minimise the potential harm to the attacking forces.

The battle was a strong, significant victory for the Allies, the first decisive win for the British Army of the war causing the Germans to recognise that for them the war was lost.

The defeated German ­leader General Erich Ludendorff described it in the following words: “August 8th was the black day of the German Army in the history of the war.”

On August 12, 1918, at Chateau de Bertangles, Monash was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on the battlefield by King George V, the first time a British monarch had honoured a commander in such a way in 200 years.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography says of his post-war career as the general manager and later chairman of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria: “His new task was of great public importance, ­difficulty and attractiveness to an engineer.

“Making abundant cheap power available by harnessing the huge deposits of Gippsland brown coal would remove a crippling handicap to development of industry.

“Unexpected high moisture content of the coal produced a grave early crisis, but power from Yallourn, the model garden town, was turned on in 1924 … Monash faced great political difficulties and distrust of the project which ­required all his forceful pugnacity to overcome; he could not tolerate (Sir) Frederic Eggleston, his minister in 1924-27, who distrusted Mon­ash’s ‘ruthless egotism’. He survived a major inquiry in 1926, and next year the commission showed a profit.”

By 1930 the initial task was completed, the SEC grid covered the state and the commission was established as a highly successful state enterprise. Monash himself had inspired a degree of creativity, loyalty and affection, probably unparalleled in any other large Australian corporation then or since. As in the AIF he displayed his gift of both exciting their best from his colleagues and making them his personal friends. “He was a great leader,” a fellow SEC commissioner Hyman Herman wrote, “and a genius in getting to the heart of any problem and finding its solution … the ablest, biggest-minded and biggest-hearted man I have ever known.”

Australia faces a national energy security crisis and while the Turnbull government is ­effectively handcuffed by its slavish adherence to the Paris Agreement, the Opposition and the Greens would do even more to cripple the nation if they ever gained power.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Snowy Hydro 2.0 is a con trick of the first order. It will require coal power to pump water uphill to provide the water which, when released, will power the turbines which will generate the electricity. For it to be economically feasible the hydro power generated will have to be more expensive to consumers than the coal-generated electricity which pumped it up hill — and that is just not going to happen.

Were he alive today, General Monash would swiftly put the Snowy project manager Paul Broad and Turnbull straight. What neither Broad nor Turnbull seem to understand is that it is impossible to compare the cost of renewable and coal-generated power.

One is intermittent and ­relies on coal-fired power stations for backup stability — that would be renewables.

The other is constant and reliable and cheaper.

The nation has not been chloroformed, it has been hit by novichok, the Russian nerve agent. It is not thinking or functioning logically.

Just as Lenin referred to Westerners who refused to ­acknowledge the monstrous nature of Soviet communism as “useful idiots,” so today are useful idiots blind to the damage they cause our nation.