Three Liberal stooges ignorant of party’s power policy

MPs (from left) Trent Zimmerman, Tim Wilson and Trevor Evans.

What you have to understand about Barnaby Joyce coming out in support of a new coal-fired power station in Queensland, underwritten by the federal government, is that this has nothing to do with energy policy. It’s about the federal leadership of the Nationals. Joyce’s message plays well among Queensland National MPs.

As long as the Paluszczuk Labor government is in power, it is very unlikely any new coal-fired electricity plant will be built in that state.

The fact is such a plant would compete with government-owned coal-fired plants, which would not suit the Queensland government, and any new plant would require its consent.

So why then has Scott Morrison been so keen to dismiss Joyce’s call? In reality, the Prime Minister is rejecting only the specific proposition of a government-supported coal-fired power station in Queensland.

For him to rule out all new coal-fired plants would be a rejection of one of the key elements of his government’s energy policy, which is to encourage new reliable electricity generation through government underwriting. This follows the recommendation of the ACCC.

A tender has been called and there have been 66 submissions. At least six of them are for coal-fired installations — some in Victoria, some in NSW. These submissions are being reviewed and we should expect some announcements soon. One can only assume Morrison is not ruling out submissions that involve coal-fired generation: that would be like running a lottery and then deliberately losing some of the tickets.

Mind you, Morrison is not being very clear, keen to curry favour with the climate-obsessed inner-city voters — “We must do more to tackle climate change,” whatever that means — and the self-serving parliamentarians who occupy these electorates.

Don’t you just love it when intellects such as Trent Zimmerman, Tim Wilson and Trevor Evans declare that we should be interested only in electricity generation without government assistance.

Here are some juicy quotes.

According to Zimmerman: “A Liberal government should not be in the business of building new coal-fired power stations when the market is not prepared to make those investments itself for good economic reasons.”

According to Wilson: “I’m not a fan of the government getting involved and building new coal-fired power stations. I don’t believe that is Coalition policy or ever has been.”

According to Evans: “The economics don’t stack up, the federal government has zero experience in it, and quite frankly the partyroom would not support it. I would not vote for that. In terms of there even being a suggestion that this should be done — I would characterise it as a very small and lonely minority whistling Dixie on this.”

Here’s the thing: it’s already government policy, boys. Does this mean these three stooges will object to Snowy 2.0 because “the economics don’t stack up” save for the massive injection of taxpayer-funded equity? And does this mean this trio will be campaigning for the immediate cessation of all forms of subsidies to renewable energy, which currently amount to at least $3 billion a year? I thought not.

It’s all very well the three amigos dismissing the concerns of ordinary Australians about the impact of rising electricity prices and falling reliability — their constituents are well-heeled and far removed from the concerns of less well-off citizens. But they might want to do a bit of work understanding their own government’s energy policy.