Piers Akerman: Chris Bowen has a renewable fake news line about Net Zero reducing power bills
This election is shaping up as a choice between realists, who understand the cost of electricity is driven by the Net Zero fantasy, and fantasists, who tend to tear up and clutch their hankies whenever they listen to sob stories, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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If you believe the fake news coming from the Labor camp in this phony election campaign, I’ve got a Harbour Bridge to sell you.
Punters know that few, if any, claims slipping from the mouth of the smirking Energy and Climate Minister Chris Bowen stand up to scrutiny. The last time he uttered a believable sentence may have been before the 2019 election when he boasted the memorable instruction: “If you don’t like our policies, don’t vote for us”.
Probably Bowen, not the Almighty, delivered that election to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Clearly, the minister learnt nothing from his arrogant pre-election overreach, reinforcing Einstein’s observation that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
With his blustering self-assurance, he has blamed economy-smashing hikes in electricity prices on – wait for it – the coal-fired power plants that generate the nation’s lifesaving reliable, dispatchable power.
The actual culprit is Labor’s obsession with Net Zero and the massive burden of the rollout of miles of transmission lines connecting taxpayer-subsidised unreliable, intermittent wind and solar factories to a shaky grid.
What is certain is that neither Bowen nor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will repeat their promise of a $275 reduction in our electricity bills by the end of their government’s first term. That promise was not lightly made. It was repeated 97 times.
In Bowen’s own Western Sydney electorate of McMahon, punters are now paying $1300 more than what he promised. That’s an electric shocker!
In a pre-election sweetener, the government is suggesting a further one-off rebate (of probably $300) to be delivered after the poll but don’t forget every dollar the government hands out was in your hands before the government took it.
Governments don’t have any money of their own. It all comes from you. Governments can’t run businesses, they don’t own coal or iron ore mines. Indeed, nothing they do generates capital.
Every cent they dole out is money that you have paid them through taxes, rates and levies you are compelled to pay for the stifling red and green tape that is choking the life out of ordinary Australians.
Somehow, being handed a small amount of money that was yours originally and being told that it was a gift from a benevolent, caring government just doesn’t cut it. And remember this: You are paying for this massive hit on your power bill after you’ve paid taxes on everything.
This election is shaping up as a choice between the realists who understand physics and the fantasists, who tend to tear up and clutch their hankies whenever they listen to sob stories, like “call me Albo’s” frequent reference to having been brought up by a single mum in a housing commission flat.
Realists look at Bowen and Albanese’s claims and realise that the real cost of electricity is driven by the Net Zero fantasy, the dream that has crippled the economies of Western European nations and sent their industries to low-cost Chinese factories and is killing household budgets and closing businesses.
At the coal face, no pun intended, miners are openly deriding the CSIRO and GenCost costings relied on by the government.
The newly-formed Coal Australia has directly challenged GenCost’s estimates, questioning its methodology and conclusions about the cost of coal-fired plants.
Bowen took to a Western Sydney stage last week with Zali Steggall, MP for Warringah, and Greens Senator Dr Mehreen Faruqi. They all chanted the same disproven Bowen mantra: Renewables provide the cheapest form of energy.
Wilful disinformation but, hey, Harbour Bridge, anyone?
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Originally published as Piers Akerman: Chris Bowen has a renewable fake news line about Net Zero reducing power bills
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