Andrew Bolt: Labor’s power lies will cost Australia dearly

BHP’s announcement that 3000 workers could lose their jobs as it considers shutting its Nickel West operation in WA is the latest example of global warming policies killing Australian jobs.

Millions of Victorians sitting in the dark last week weren’t our only warning that Labor’s green energy plans will smash us.

BHP also announced 3000 workers could lose their jobs, as it considers shutting its Nickel West operation in WA.

It’s the latest example of global warming policies killing Australian jobs by driving heavy industries to China, Indonesia or India.

The Albanese government should stop weeping crocodile tears over Nickel West, because it’s exactly the kind of gassy business it wants to stop (allegedly) heating the world to hell.

Just last July, it even punished Nickel West and more than 200 other big emitters with a carbon tax – the “safeguard mechanism” – to force them to cut their gases or pay up.

Punchline: the world still craves nickel to make batteries for electric cars, but that nickel now will come not from green Australia but more likely from cheap-as-chips Indonesia, which cares so little about global warming it burned 33 per cent more coal in 2022 than 2021.

Millions of Victorians sitting in the dark last week weren’t our only warning that Labor’s green energy plans will smash us.

In fact, while we’re shutting our coal-fired power stations, the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air says Indonesia, in contrast, is building another 28 coal-fired units just to power its nickel industry, which increased exports tenfold in just five years. We lose jobs, emissions still rise.

The Albanese government now doesn’t know if it’s coming or going. Last week it listed nickel as a critical industry to let Nickel West get cheap government-backed loans. It’s subsidising the business it hit with a green tax.

This isn’t a one-off. Last year Sorbent said it would shift some operations from Melbourne to Indonesia, because of “unsustainable energy costs” and other “macroeconomic” challenges. That’s another 70 jobs lost, and a third of our toilet paper will come from overseas.

It’s not just electricity costs that are killing Sorbent. Its gas bill jumped almost 300 per cent last year.

Again, global warming hysteria hurt us. Victoria’s Labor government banned gas exploration for nearly a decade, and still bans gas fracking, which helped the US overtake Australia as an exporter of LNG.

All this damage, and sold with lies. Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen keeps saying “renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy”, but why, then, would a poor country like Indonesia build so many coal generators instead, and price our industries out of the market?