Steve Price: Pink batts, cash for clunkers and big-dollar handouts all over again
The Albanese government seems captured by Rudd-like grand schemes while forgetting keeping the lights on is what matters. It’s not a green energy dream unfolding before us but an Indigenous heritage challenge nightmare.
Opinion
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Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek this week ticked off approval for a 12,000-hectare solar farm at a remote location in the Northern Territory.
Designed to power three million homes, it will need 800km of transmission lines to get the electricity to Darwin – population about 170,000 people.
Plibersek also made it clear the project should protect the local greater Bilby and other habitat.
SunCable — with a billionaire investor Mike Cannon-Brookes a major player — eventually hopes to run the world’s longest underwater cable to Singapore, exporting Australian sunshine-produced electricity to Asia.
Sounds great until you ask yourself the questions around green energy and power bills for actual cities like Melbourne and Sydney.
This government, like the previous Labor federal governments — especially that of Kevin Rudd — seems captured by grand schemes while forgetting what really matters is keeping the lights on in the rest of Australia.
At the same time this 30,000-acre monstrosity was being approved, Minister Plibersek was refusing to allow a $1bn gold mine in NSW to go ahead because of Indigenous Heritage claims.
She overrode her own department and the NSW government and the heritage claims are hotly contested.
I never thought we would again see a federal government so out of touch with what really matters to most Australians but it’s happening.
It’s Rudd’s pink batts, cash for clunkers and big dollar handouts all over again.
Does anyone in Canberra ever sit down and pose questions like: if we need 12,000 hectares and 800km of power lines to switch on electricity for three million homes that don’t exist, what we will we need for Melbourne’s five million people?
This stuff is straight out of Utopia and Yes Minister – it’s not a green dream but a renewables nightmare unfolding before us.
It reminds me of the dying days of the 2007 federal election campaign and another environment minister, former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett.
Nine network veteran entertainment reporter Richard Wilkins and I were chatting at Melbourne Airport when Garrett – a member of Labor’s opposition frontbench — walked in, and Wilkins introduced us. Garrett ended up Rudd’s environment minister.
The front page of the Herald Sun that day had a story about how Labor had copied 22 Coalition policies.
With less than 12 days until polling day, Garrett’s reply when I asked him about this was a bombshell – he said “don’t worry once we get in, we’ll just change it all.”
We went our separate ways, I was flying back to Sydney to present the Drive radio program on then-talk station 2UE, Wilkins was off to Brisbane and Garrett – I don’t remember where he was flying to.
I mentioned to Richard that Garrett’s remark was political dynamite so close to polling day, but he said he thought his old rocker mate was just joking.
On the flight back I had a dilemma — the comment was an answer to a direct question from someone Garrett knew was a radio talkback host in the shadow of polling day during an election that polls said incumbent Prime Minister John Howard was going to lose to Kevin Rudd. Do I tell my radio audience that federal Labor was about to – according to a prospective Cabinet minister – walk back on 22 election promises if they were to win on November 24.
You bet I did, and all hell broke loose.
This went to the credibility of the new government and Garrett was forced the next day to admit “it was probably a dumb thing to have done”.
He went on to say “the way it is carrying on around the country is a clear indication we won’t be having any more conversations with Steve Price in an airport lounge or anywhere else for that matter”.
True to his word we haven’t spoken since.
This week Garrett’s name was mentioned when Uranium mining boss Brad Welsh revealed he struggled to get 10 minutes with Resources Minister Madeline King to talk about his mining leases being cancelled at the Jabiluka uranium mine on the edge of Kakadu National Park.
It was reported that Garrett though had no trouble getting an audience with Albanese to talk about those same leases.
Garett has been a long-time campaigner against uranium mining in the Territory and despite his self-confessed “dumb” mistake back in 2007 still has impeccable Labor connections.
A pity really for Australia and our ambitions to become nuclear powered as the now Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has promised to do.
Not only were we once happy to dig up one of the richest reserves of uranium in the world and ship it offshore but we are starting to shut down that mining industry around claims that it will damage — Garrett claims — Indigenous cultural sites that should be protected.
Forget that this mine has been operating responsibly for decades earning export income for Australia and providing much needed jobs in the Territory.
The federal government is more open to talking with anti-uranium activists like Garrett than mining bosses trying to save their business.
At the same time the gold mine being cancelled in NSW is over claims it will upset Aboriginal Cultural Heritage sites.
This ignored the local Aboriginal land council who said they were worried “that a range of claims were made on this issue by people and organisations lacking experience expertise and authority”.
Miners around the country are warning of a sovereign risk to investment in Australia. That’s akin to killing the goose that lays the golden egg and it’s not confined to mining.
This obsession with having to jump through expensive over-the-top regulations to satisfy Indigenous groups within an inch of your life is crushing many people simply trying to develop their own assets.
To prove the point, I have been provided with a tax invoice by a regional property owner wanting to invest in a development on his own land near Seymour.
The invoice is from a mob called Unearthed Heritage Australia based in Castlemaine dated January 1 this year.
The cultural heritage process he was forced to go through is the stuff of nightmares and highlights the nonsense of what’s happening on the ground.
It starts with an Aboriginal place registration fee of $4800 followed by a $10,240 fee for stone artefact analysis and – cop this – a $16,000 bill for a senior heritage adviser to be on site for eight days.
It gets worse. It was going to cost the property owner $20,000 for a machine excavator and sieve for the eight days and then something called a Reconciliation Action Plan was priced at $34,800 for a grand total of $94,424 before any building began.
All this took 18 months and delayed what he was going to develop for two years. He gave up.
One small project near a regional town. Can you imagine what’s happening around the rest of the country and the money sloshing around?
A green heritage-challenged nightmare coming to a project near you.
Likes
• Train inspectors checking tickets on Sydney peak hour trains pity it doesn’t happen on our trams.
• AFLW launch for season number eight and still crowds are pathetically small and the standard poor.
• Dustin Martin and Dylan Grimes tribute from the Tiger army this weekend – let’s hope Dusty turns up.
Dislikes
• Taxi drivers refusing the take a fare when paying with cab-charge.
• Premier Jacinta Allan’s delusional interpretation of foot traffic in the CBD with numbers still low near public service offices.
• Federal government plans to hit the elderly with increased costs for aged care if they are not on an aged pension.
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