Vikki Campion: Wood heating under threat from elitist eco-warriors

To ban wood heating as the cost of electricity ratchets up, and access to affordable power is broken by renewables zealots, fails the first law of government, Vikki Campion writes.

Being poor does not cut it anymore, now you must also be cold.

We now have an urban politician, who won his safe seat under the guise of being a Liberal, telling us that we cannot use the first renewable source of fuel to keep warm. From the dawn of time, we have burned twigs and logs.

Today anyone who owns a chainsaw and has access to a rough paddock can keep warm. But no longer; the earl of elitist eco-warriors Environment Minister Matt Kean has delivered an edict from air-conditioned comfort.

Politicians like him name climate agreements after the cities they junket to – Paris, Kyoto and, this year, Glasgow. Forget Scotland’s opera, ballet and national theatre, the environmentally enlightened should instead write the next climate policy at the top of the Great Dividing Range in winter.

Instead of the Glasgow Agreement, we should have the Guyra Agreement – it’s a lot closer, a lot cheaper and we will even turn off the woodfires so these socially aware politicians intent on “clean air” can have an authentic Guyra experience.

Environment Minister Matt Kean. Picture: Facebook

Suffering Guyra’s July mean minimum temperature of about zero degrees with no wood heating, delivers a two-person household a quarterly electricity bill of about $1600. Firewood, meanwhile, is free to cut – or about $150 a tonne to buy.

To ban wood heating as the cost of electricity ratchets up, and access to affordable power is broken by renewables zealots and carpetbag investors, fails the first law of government.

To add to the indignity, renewables-only electricity will likely blackout when you need it most. This is when demand is high – either on a cold, still night with no sun shining and no wind blowing, or blowing a gale and snowing.

In Hornsby, Mr Kean’s electorate, your toilet bowl does not freeze and crack. In Guyra they do. In June, falling asleep outside can be death. Snow is occasional but pipe-cracking frost is morning after morning.

In towns along the Great Dividing Range, winter nights often drop below -10C – the same average January temperature for Oulu, Finland. Winter nights thousands of feet above sea level can get as cold as the North Pole at times.

This is the disconnect from the street in Guyra where people are struggling to pay for the bare essentials on the median income of $519 a week.

But this year, more privileged politicians will go to Glasgow and sip single malt whisky while they diminish life at home. I invite Mr Kean to come to freezing Guyra, 1300m above sea level, and tell the elderly – who don’t have the option of selling up and moving to Hornsby where the climate is kinder – to give up their wood fires.

Snuggling up in front of a blazing log fire can be a necessity in some areas, but is under threat.

The federal government can’t afford the financial assistance the state cabinet document promises. Considering the latest dole rise amounts to $9bn for an extra $3.57 a day over four years, the nation would go broke trying to pay thousand-dollar power bills.

In the mad pursuit of political dogma, at the expense of people in old, uninsulated homes, often elderly at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, Mr Kean appears confused about who and what he represents – this week rallying for a republic and government regulation of how to keep warm. Is that the new NSW?

Royalists don’t have much to worry about. In 1999 the republican movement managed to get titans Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser in the same room to record an ad with virtually every media outlet onside. It was a spectacular belly flop.

Now the best they can come up with is confused Mr Kean, an ousted ex-PM intent on destroying his former colleagues, a former premier that nobody outside NSW has ever heard of, and Paul Keating.

While the constitutional monarchy, a wash-up of the feudal system, is not perfect, do you really want to hand the design of the alternative to the zealots forcing household heating regulations?

While these guys are using Harry and Meghan as a reason to leave the monarchy, others believe their departure is a reason to stay.

Canada and New Zealand don’t seem too perturbed by the drama of the monarchy of an island off Europe. They are smart enough to see beyond that. While our model may have some flaws, we can improve our system without letting greens in Liberal clothing design the alternative.

The woke birthed Trump, and the more that intolerant social justice warriors sink into the marrow of city Liberals, the larger One Nation’s Mark Latham and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers presence on Macquarie St will grow.