Steve Price: I called out green Aussie billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes over coal, and got trolled
Magnate Mike Cannon-Brookes, who owns some of Australia’s most costly property, wants to shut down Latrobe Valley coal. But question him at your own risk.
Opinion
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Mike Cannon-Brookes — the third richest Australian — seems like a nice enough bloke and is not only brilliant at making money but very good at his own PR.
Born in the US, the 42-year-old, according to Forbes magazine, has a net worth of around $18.2 billion, and boy does he know how to spend it.
This week, along with some Canadian partners, he said he wanted to pay $8 billion for Australia’s oldest energy giant AGL - and then shut its existing coal plants in the next eight years.
Victoria’s Latrobe Valley Loy Yang A coal fired plant will cease using coal, along with the Bayswater plant in NSW. They would be shuttered early if the bid succeeds. Current AGL plans don’t have Loy Yang A ceasing coal use until 2045, a lengthy 23 years away.
AGL has already rejected the Cannon-Brookes led consortium’s bid as being too low, but it’s expected his partner — the Canadian asset manager Brookfield — will come back with an increased bid.
So enamoured are they with the baseball cap wearing, groovily bearded Cannon-Brookes’ plan to turn the coal plants into giant batteries and renewable energy plants, that supporters of the plan refuse to even debate the impact it will have on power prices.
Indeed Cannon-Brookes himself has claimed retail energy prices – the amount you pay for your electricity - will come down and be cheaper than it is now.
That’s a pipe dream, and it’s astounding that nobody is talking about the impact these early closures will have on places like the coal rich Latrobe Valley and its mining communities.
No plans for what jobs will be lost, no debate about selling power assets to a foreign country – imagine if the Cannon-Brookes deal was hanging off a Chinese asset management firm not one from Canada.
The Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already claimed power prices would go up, not down, if more coal plants were closed too quickly.
The Canadians, however, have chosen their partner in this takeover bid very cleverly because the co-founder of the software firm Atlassian – Cannon-Brookes – is one of Australia’s untouchables.
Despite being obscenely wealthy and apparently addicted to buying eye wateringly expensive real estate, he is a darling of the climate change set and seen by the vocal left as not being able to do any wrong.
Unlike Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, or the billionaire Queenslander Clive Palmer, the Sydney based billionaire can’t be questioned on even the most basic of facts without creating an online pile on of the most vicious sort.
I found that out this week on national TV when I had the hide to ask whether Mike considered himself a hypocrite buying an asset – AGL - that would drive up power prices for average Australians given how big his house is. And boy did I cop it for that question and his reply.
Cannon-Brookes’ real-estate assets in NSW alone make even Rinehart and Palmer look cheap. He owns, with his family, Fairwater — the former family compound of the Fairfax newspaper dynasty.
Reports at the time had the sale price at $100 million. His partner in Atlassian Scott Farquhar paid $71 million for the sister property next door called Elaine.
Fairwater sits on 11,200 sq metres of Sydney Harbour fronting land, the biggest private land holding on the harbour.
But that’s not the only expensive dirt Mike owns.
In the NSW Southern Highlands he bought Wattle Ridge farm with 15 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms and four lakes for a reported $13 million, and splashed out another $25 million for houses in Sydney’s north at Newport and on Scotland Island.
I can’t even start to add up the bedrooms, bathrooms kitchens and gardens that this family own. But dare I suggest, the whole ‘I’ll save the planet’ spiel is a bit rich — like climate advocates using private jets to fly into Glasgow for that Cop26 talkfest — and you’d better put on a crash helmet.
Now Twitter, to be fair, has become the sewer for foul mouthed greenie activists and I’m used to copping it on that platform, but this week’s attacks have surprised even me.
Zali Steggall had a crack off the back of her coal donations troubles, but to her credit was polite. Others not so much.
An example from Andrew: “Magnificent seeing Cannon-Brookes putting that moronic right wing anti-green renewable energy dinosaur in his place.” Meaning me.
That was one of the polite comments. I was called ‘a f---wit’, accused of behaving like a twat, a village idiot and taking a plastic knife to a gun fight.
Last word to Paul on Twitter: “Pretty great how Steve Price made a complete idiot of himself, he has no idea and is not a journalist in any way.” Thanks Paul as I celebrate 50 years of uninterrupted work as one.
Having untouchable Bambi-like figures in public life is dangerous because the inference is they are above reproach and not able to be criticised.
To his credit, Cannon-Brookes puts himself out there and is passionate about using his wealth on causes aligned to his beliefs.
That doesn’t mean though, that you can’t ask a billionaire with a few hundred million dollars worth of houses, if he’s doing his own bit to save the planet.
Just get set for keyboard heroes to smack you down.
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Originally published as Steve Price: I called out green Aussie billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes over coal, and got trolled
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