PM Anthony Albanese gets his emissions reduction wish but all Australians will pay for it

PM Anthony Albanese has gotten what he wished for: a mandatory great big 43 per cent emissions reduction burden on every single one of our backs.

What’s that saying again: be careful what you wish ...?

In 2009 the Greens torpedoed Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme and indirectly set in train a lot and I mean a lot of ‘events’.

Just to describe the ‘events’ at the top level, one thing led to another and we got Julia Gillard and her ill-fated premiership; along with her “there will be no carbon tax” that, well, actually was; in turn, giving Tony Abbott his great election-winning “axe the tax”; then his ill-fated premiership; Malcolm Turnbull, Scomo and now Albo.

And now - courtesy of the Greens going full circle, lucky for some, unlucky for everyone else, 13 years later - Albo gets what he wished for: a mandatory great big 43 per cent emissions reduction burden on every single one of our backs.

In short, 26m Australians are in the words of that great American observer and chronicler of human folly, HL Mencken, “going to get it good and hard” for wishing for, for voting for, a Labor-Green combine in Canberra.

The first thing ‘to go’ – well, it had ‘gone’ anyway because it never existed in reality – is the $275 promised cut in the power bill from the prime minister.

Now, he can’t muddy the waters by claiming that the $275 cut had been stymied by his government not getting the 43 per cent cut that would trigger a sprouting of all that ‘free’ wind and solar.

It was and is very straight black and white: Albo promised to cut every power bill by $275 a year, and do so by 2025.

Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese spoke to media during a press conference in Parliament House in Canberra on August 3. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

There was no small print asterisk.

The bills would be cut under Labor.

Incidentally, is Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe the last person in the land to have believed him?

Because 2025 is when Lowe said Tuesday, he’d finally get inflation back down below 3 per cent?

Well, good luck on that new Lowe inflation promise of ‘3 by 25’ to replace his ‘not before 24’ interest rate one.

I wonder what he’s going to promise for 26?

In the same vein, you’ll be lucky, very lucky, if you can get away with only a $275 increase in your power bill over the term of this government, now that it’s got the green light to go gang-busters on the 43 per cent.

What’s not well appreciated, is that it is not just a 43 per cent cut in the emissions of the electricity-generating sector, but a 43 per cent cut – and by 2030, just seven years away – in emissions from everything.

That’s to say, of course, with just one single exception: you won’t be required to cut your actual bodily emissions of CO2 by 43 per cent.

At least, not yet.

Cutting emissions from electricity generation is the ‘easy’ bit.

It’s still mad, bad and dangerous and utterly insane and stupid.

But it’s easy: you just close coal-fired power stations.

It’s a lot harder with the ‘everything else’ – from the rural sector, through manufacturing, tourism, health, infrastructure, house-building, every other industry and on to individual life-styles.

That means it’s also going to be ‘easy’ to get extra cuts from power generation, by closing coal-fired stations even faster than the sector contribution requires.

To be replaced by….what exactly?

Especially if we go back to increasing our population – and so, power and gas use – by 250,000 immigrants every year.

As short-sighted, always avaricious, so-called industry leaders want.

Well, one thing coal-fired stations have to be ‘replaced’ by is a lot of new wires looping out to all those, at least when they are new, shiny turbines and panels despoiling the landscape and chopping or frying birds.

That will cost tens of billions of dollars – and it will go straight on your power bill.

Originally published as PM Anthony Albanese gets his emissions reduction wish but all Australians will pay for it