Surely, like China, Australia deserves a future with energy security too

When it comes to the crucial issue of energy, China leaves Australia for dead. As The Australian’s North Asia correspondent Will Glasgow reports: “Beijing made clear that security of supply was its top priority and downgraded the urgency of its green transition” (“Xi’s answer on energy: everything, everywhere, all at once”, 13/1). Sure, it’s rolling out a string of solar, wind and nuclear power projects, but these are dwarfed by its massive build of new coal-fired power stations. In 2023, China accounted for 95 per cent of the world’s new coal power construction activity.

Sydney-based Climate Energy Finance head Tim Buckley says: “At the end of the day, they’re all about energy security.”

Like Australia, China is endowed with huge reserves of coal and, like Australia, more than 60 per cent of China’s electricity generation comes from coal. But that is where the similarities end. While coal will remain the backbone of China’s energy system, under the Albanese Labor government our coal-fired power stations are being shut down to accommodate its belief in a total reliance on renewables. This is despite the International Energy Agency – no global warming sceptic – specifically stating that a full renewable grid is not deliverable with existing technologies.

Yet this is the road Labor has put us on, a road littered with wildly unpredictable renewables, held captive by the vagaries of the weather, that will drive our vital industries offshore, lead businesses to close their doors, decimate the economy and plunge households into energy poverty.

Surely, like China, we are entitled to the energy security that coal-fired power delivers.

Dale Ellis, Innisfail, Qld

It would be useful if the nay-sayers and Luddites who dominate the anti-Coalition forces, cunningly disguised as an anti-nuclear movement, were to read up a little on civil nuclear power. A good starting point would be Will Glasgow’s front-page treatise on the energy situation in China. This reveals that its premier signed off on the construction of no fewer than 11 new nuclear power stations in a single meeting in August and is likely to continue at such an annual rate of approvals for three decades. In addition, it can take as little as 61 months to construct and commission a 1.1-gigawatt nuclear plant.

So what exactly is the problem with nuclear?

K. MacDermott, Binalong, NSW

It’s absurd that Britons have allowed green activists to stop their access to cheap and plentiful electricity because they believe using gas and oil is an existential threat (“Cold, hard energy lessons in Britain’s grim winter’s tale”, 13/1). Yet, as can be seen by numerous letters to The Australian, too many of us believe in the same fearmongering. Do we have to destroy ourselves before we wake up to our stupidity?

Ross McDonald, Gordon, NSW

Welfare and grog

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price invariably presents commonsense views to improve the daily lives of Aboriginal Aussies. What could be easier than the bureaucrats of Centrelink changing the day to distribute welfare payments so that it does not clash with the availability of alcohol, better known as takeaway grog days?

No matter which political party is in government, increasingly we are seeing the tragic consequences of alcohol-fuelled violence in remote Aboriginal communities such as Wadeye.

As Nampijinpa Price keeps saying, it is well past time for federal, state and territory governments to put aside their political differences and their grand plans of “policy reform”.

It’s time to give political ego a miss and just sit down together and work on commonsense suggestions that we all know will help struggling families in remote communities to simply cope with the stress of everyday living.

John Bell, Heidelberg Heights, Vic

Day of citizenship

Alexander Downer writes it is unfortunate the debate about Australia Day cannot be put to rest (“No value to nation in deconstructing Australia Day”, 13/1). The debate will never be quelled while the hook for the date rests on the anniversary of the planting of the British flag at Port Jackson.

National days around the world celebrate the anniversary of independence or unification.

I agree with Downer that it is a blessing that the British settled Australia, particularly when one considers the alternatives.

But the debate over Australia Day is circular because no alternative day has achieved any traction.

Many Australians may not be aware that January 26 is also the anniversary of the start of the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948, when for the first time Australians could take out Australian citizenship.

Now this anniversary could work better with the traditional national day narrative and also avoid the incongruity of celebrating the achievement of another nation.

David Muir, Indooroopilly, Qld