Andrew Bolt: Billionaire climate huckster Andrew Forrest biggest budget winner

The biggest winner from the green-crazed Albanese government’s budget is billionaire Andrew Forrest, which is terrible news for everyone else.

The biggest winner from the Albanese government’s budget is billionaire climate huckster Andrew Forrest, which is terrible news for everyone else.

Forrest doesn’t just get the $300 cut in his power bill which the government is handing out to all – pensioners and billionaires alike – to disguise the fact that global warming policies are causing electricity prices to explode.

He also stands to get hundreds of millions of dollars – maybe even billions – from this budget to produce a dodgy “miracle” green gas which the government is desperately betting will end the energy crisis it’s creating.

Yes, Forrest has helped to convince this green-crazed government to back his dream of using massive amounts of wind and solar power to create hydrogen from water, which Treasurer Jim Chalmers declared on Tuesday would help make us a “clean energy superpower”.

Andrew Forrest, talking with Treasurer Jim Chalmers, stands to make millions from this budget. Picture: David Crosling

Here’s one of the maddest things about this delusional budget, the weirdest example of taxpayer-funded wishful thinking.

The government faced a clear choice in trying to stop Australia from running out of power as global warming policies destroy our fossil fuel supplies, and wind and solar power prove too fickle to make up the difference.

It could either back nuclear power, which is safe, green, proven and already operating in 32 countries.

Or it could back green hydrogen, a highly explosive gas that’s grossly expensive to make, difficult to pipe and transport, unproven at scale and working commercially nowhere in the world.

You guessed it. Chalmers, a nuclear-phobe, went for the unproven over the proven. Hydrogen would save us!

“Getting to net zero emissions will require renewable hydrogen,” Chalmers declared on Tuesday. He even boasted hydrogen could make us a “renewable energy superpower”.

All it needed to work was billions of dollars from this government.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen with Dr Andrew Forrest at Uungula Wind Farm in central west NSW. Picture: Supplied / Squadron Energy

Isn’t that odd? If hydrogen is such a world-beating money-spinner, why of all the investors in all the world does it need Australia’s government to chip in?

Yet Chalmers has no such doubts. In his budget he bet billions of your dollars on green hydrogen.

There’s $2 billion for a new Hydrogen Headstart program to lavish cash on “flagship projects” of the kind Forrest especially is touting. There’s even $2 million for any Aborigines who jump on to the hydrogen bandwagon.

But wait, there’s more! Chalmers said he’ll “invest” (because “spend” is too honest a word) another $23 billion over a decade on green schemes. You know, like hydrogen.

There’s also a new Hydrogen Production Tax Incentive that will cost us nearly $7 billion, plus $17.1 million for a National Hydrogen Strategy.

Have you got the idea? Chalmers’ budget is betting our house on green hydrogen, when no one can know if it’s a miracle or another green dud like geothermal power, wave generators or the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme – all failures also backed by federal governments.

And look who’s standing at the front of the queue, with his golden begging bowl.

Why, Andrew Forrest! Is that you?

Andrew Forrest speaking during the 50th ASEAN-Australia Special Summit in Melbourne. Picture: AFP

Yes, it’s Forrest, the iron ore tycoon, who’s pushed green hydrogen like a green Jesus, selling it as our great green salvation.

Forrest is the zealot who warns global warming will cause a “lethal humidity” which could kill “many millions”, and we must back green hydrogen to save us.

He’s called it “the purest source of energy in the world” and claimed it “could replace up to three quarters of our emissions”. Forrest has converted the Albanese Government’s equally Messianic Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who rhapsodises that green hydrogen is “fundamental” to our “clean energy future”.

Yet so many Forrest projects to make or use hydrogen get delayed or called off.

For instance, three years ago, Forrest and then Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk promoted Forrest’s planned hydrogen project on Gibson Island.

“What we’re seeing is the green energy revolution,” declared Palaszczuk at a ceremony made to look like an official opening.

“Queensland leads Australia, leads the world in really exciting sustainable green industries,” agreed Forrest.

Bowen last year even tossed the project $13.7m of taxpayer money.

But, oh dear. That still wasn’t enough.

Forrest has now missed three deadlines to commit investment to the Gibson Island project, blaming Australia’s “structurally high green electricity costs” – high, ironically, precisely because of crazy global warming policies.

But maybe now, with Chalmers offering billions more in help, Forrest may calculate he can clean up by cleaning out taxpayers.

This is this supposedly Labor government at work: tossing billions at billionaires to work on mirages while the poor pay and pay.