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By Jo Nova
And so we arrive, a nation of people looking at TikTok as they cruise down the freeway
This week, our national energy policy is an Agony-Aunt letter — poor Alexa, 21, has been suffering from ‘climate anxiety’ since she was 15. Instead of asking her grandparents (who don’t rate a mention) she dreams of telling her grandkids that she did “everything she could”. Everything, that is, except for talking to her own grandparents, listening to climate skeptics, or seeking alternative views.
Instead of doing her homework, she gate-crashed the PMs promo event so she could be used as emotional bait in a battle between the deep-state-banker-blob and the workers. She probably thinks she’s on the side of the workers (though she’s also probably never met one).
Channel Nine reports on her mental health disorder in the middle of an election campaign, not to help her heal, but to exploit her to push for the climate policies, and political winners that Nine shareholders probably want. See their first line. It’s not “news”, it’s political advertising.
Young voters are forming a rallying cry for the federal government to address one of their greatest concerns: climate change.
Alexa Stuart, 21, has already spent years of her life anxious about the climate.
In other words, (twist-the-knife) — to solve her mental illness, we should turn our electrical network into a weather modification scheme at a cost of hundreds of billions, right? (Either that, or we could send her to a pub for fish and chips with a few climate skeptics. It’s so much cheaper.)
No country on Earth has made its own climate nicer with solar panels, or cricket burgers, and most of them are not even trying, but we should, they imply, because only horrible people would not be touched by her sad story. And after all, electricity runs on hope, faith and diversity, not on three phase power. If we follow the fantasy here — coal power causes heart palpitations.
Agony Aunt, (April Glover) digs deep for science, and finds psychological coleslaw instead:
One in 10 Australian adults is experiencing “significant eco-anxiety” like Stuart is, said the Black Dog Institute’s Chloe Watfern.
More than 80 per cent of 16 to 25-year-olds are worried about climate change, according to research published in The Lancet.
Watfern said this currently undiagnosed feeling can be akin to “the feeling of homesickness that you have when you’re home” or even pre-traumatic stress.
It can also be known as “ecological grief”, which is “a sense of mourning for ecosystems, biodiversity and species lost to environmental damage”.
So 10% of Australian adults have a mental illness that has three different names and is “currently undiagnosed”? It’s like pre-traumatic stress, she says, which is the trauma you get from events that haven’t happened, right? Just call it paranoid fantasies, OK?
If Alexa is stressed, it’s because she had a terrible education and grew up in a journalistic wasteland. Articles like this in Nine Media exploit vulnerable teenagers to scare money and votes out of nice people and feed that money to institutional banker funds. Speaking of which…
Channel Nine’s major shareholders are institutional banker funds:
What a surprise. As MarketScreener tells us, the major shareholders of Nine Entertainment are largely large index funds which invest in renewable energy and even if they don’t, they all prefer the kinds of governments that waste lots of money, write sloppy massive legislation full of loopholes, support glorious subsidy schemes, and pointless boom and bust cycles.
| Name |
Equities |
% |
Valuation |
|
|
238,260,442 |
15.02 % |
223 M $ |
Macquarie Bank Ltd. (Private Banking)
|
145,524,938 |
9.177 % |
136 M $ |
Perpetual Investment Management Ltd.
|
139,953,811 |
8.826 % |
131 M $ |
Australian Retirement Trust Pty Ltd.
|
79,129,530 |
4.99 % |
74 M $ |
FIL Investment Management (Singapore) Ltd.
|
72,527,964 |
4.574 % |
68 M $ |
Macquarie Investment Management Global Ltd.
|
14,605,831 |
0.9211 % |
14 M $ |
|
|
10,325,056 |
0.6511 % |
10 M $ |
|
|
9,092,133 |
0.5734 % |
9 M $ |
State Street Global Advisors Trust Co.
|
8,939,320 |
0.5637 % |
8 M $ |
Netwealth Investments Ltd.
|
8,383,182 |
0.5287 % |
8 M $ |
Nine Entertainment pushes these cloying stories as a way to keep both sides of the Uniparty in line. They win either way. Even if the Big Green Labor Party doesn’t win, the Opposition candidates know what policies the media giants want, and are, for the most part, cowed into timid submission. Only Trump, who called them the Fake News Media, has used their terrible reporting against them, and outflanked them with social media. The people hate being lied to.
Any real opposition must turn the tables on the crooked media, in the politest possible way, and ask the questions that the fake journalists won’t ask. Say, do your shareholders benefit if you exaggerate climate change?
Mental illness is very serious. Should we treat it with national energy policy?
10 out of 10 based on 117 ratings
**Auroras being seen now in places like Adelaide Hills, Blue Mountains, Australind WA, Glenburnie, SA, Canberra, even Adelaide itself?**
Worth poking a head outside if you are near a dark spot. This is 12:20pm EST and may last a couple of hours. Moon is “unfortunate”, but the Glendale App is in a good zone predicting IMF is nice for five hours. People are excited in the SpaceWeatherLive forum. Nullschool suggests people may get lucky, even though auroras are fickle, changeable things.
10 out of 10 based on 18 ratings
By Jo Nova
“Follow the science” they say, right up until they destroy it
In August 2021, as the masses were being coerced and cajoled into vaccinations, the government announced a gigantic long term study with 10,000 Australians that would run for five years. They promised they would include the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and generate 100,000 samples, and 11 million datapoints. No stone would be left unturned to make sure the vaccines were safe and effective. “The Science” was being used to reassure the people.
Less than two years later the data must have looked terrible, because they suddenly stopped the study. They muttered something about archiving the data until more funding was available. (Sure, sure). Now, they want to quietly destroy the data and make sure no one can ever use it, or find out the secrets it hides with an FOI application. The cost of the entire project was $20 million, a pitifully small fraction of the $18 billion we spent on Australia’s Covid 19 treatment experiments, and it’s nothing compared to the human cost of suffering involved. Now, we’re trying to save a few dollars because the National Archives can’t afford to buy another 8 Tb hard drive from Officeworks or spend 0.1% of the Covid budget renting a cool room in a warehouse. Does anyone believe these excuses any more?
Tell the children, “Government ScienceTM” is nothing more than a tool of persuasion and marketing. It’s just a brand-name abused for profit and power.
A cynic might say those who set this study up did it purely for the purpose of “radiating confidence” in vaccines, and they never intended to finish it. But we know that if a miracle happened and the results had turned out well, they’d be running adverts, going on talkshows and sending a star recruit with a QoVax badge on a spaceflight with Katy Perry.
Destroying data is always a travesty. This experiment can never be redone:
By Rebecca Barnett, Canberra Daily and at Dystopian Downunder
 Experts and participants have since been calling for the resurrection of the QoVAX project, but in a letter to study participants last month, Metro North Health confirmed that the study will be permanently shuttered, with all samples and data to be destroyed.
“Metro North Health has determined that, for a range of reasons including the many mutations of the COVID-19 virus and similar studies from Australia and worldwide, there is no longer a scientific and public health need to retain these biological samples for future study,” said the letter, sent 19 March 2025.
“Therefore, these samples will be appropriately sterilised and disposed of. All study data collected as part of the QoVAX-SET study will be archived for the specified time-period as required by law however, it will not be accessed or used for any future purpose.”
The excuse that the virus has mutated now and that there are “similar studies” elsewhere doesn’t wash. There is probably no other dataset like this one in the world, because for the first four or five months there was almost no Covid transmission in Queensland to complicate the analysis. If people got “long covid-like symptoms” we’d know it wasn’t from Covid. Elsewhere Pfizer and others “unblinded” the tests, making sure the unvaccinated got vaccinated, so there were no ethical concerns about them missing out. But that didn’t need to happen in Queensland.
Professor Davies called the decision, on which she was not consulted, “incredibly disappointing.”
“It’s a terrible example of research wastage and loss of a globally significant opportunity to realise benefits and generate knowledge through research based on the unique samples provided by the 10,000 Queenslanders who gave consent and participated,” Professor Davies, who heads up the Allergy Research Group at QUT, told Canberra Daily.
Indeed, QoVAX was unique in that it was one of the only real-world studies to have access to a ‘comparison set’ of participants who had been vaccinated, but had not been infected with the Covid virus, which only took off in Queensland after the state borders opened in December 2021.
Who knows what new assays or techniques we might come up with in the next ten years to reanalyze those samples (if they were not destroyed). The answers to questions like: “Who will benefit the most” from vaccines and who is at the greatest risk of side effects are probably hidden in that data. We might realize a certain gene puts some people at more risk of neuropathy, or clots, or allergic reaction after vaccination, but we won’t be able to confirm that if the data is incinerated.
As Rebecca Weiser explained two years ago, this data collection is extraordinary:
The QoVax team didn’t just collect the standard data. Participants provided information on environmental and social determinants of health and biospecimens of blood and saliva that have been used to derive genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic datasets that will shed light on how the novel vaccines impact the immune system.
The secure digitally integrated biobank has 120,000 biospecimens: serum, saliva and peripheral blood mononuclear cells, in three -80 degrees Celsius freezers and three liquid nitrogen dewars. The linked data repository has four million linked data points and more than 500 whole genomes.
In addition, the biobank has access to real-time electronic medical records. With 70 per cent of hospitals in Queensland storing medical records electronically, the study was intended to allow long-term digital surveillance of health outcomes related to Covid-19 vaccinations, and intersections between vaccine responses and Sars-CoV-2 infection.
14,000 Australians died of some mystery we can’t explain in 2022, and the side effects and deaths continue to this day. Likewise, all over the world.
The people who want the data destroyed are always the ones covering something up.
Ht Matthew L
Image by Julius H. from Pixabay
Photo of needle by Hakan Nural on Unsplash
10 out of 10 based on 120 ratings
9.3 out of 10 based on 14 ratings
By Jo Nova
What looks, acts, and taxes like One World Government?
The UN has succeeded in getting a global shipping tax approved supposedly to control the weather. It will be formally adopted in October, and start in 2027, applying to ships of more than 5,000 tons. I don’t remember our parliamentarians debating it, do you? Somehow a tariff is a terrible thing, but a global trade tax paid to unaccountable bureaucrats will save the world?
It sets a very dangerous new precedent. For the first time the United Nations would be able to tax the world directly, without twisting the arm of national governments. Who owns the oceans? The UN apparently…
By 2030 the UN is projected to collect $40 billion in total from this tax. Supposedly they will hand this on to “supporting developing countries” (like China, eh?). Obviously this give the UN bureaucrats another $40 billion in power. It’s more money for them to fly to conferences in the Amazon, more money to reward their “friends”, and more money to buy the right votes at the right moment. It will feed more committees to write more press releases to shake down even more money from the hapless taxpayers of the West.
And why would it stop there? Once the UN can collect the cash from ships, why not planes too, and surely satellites and rockets? (Has anyone told Elon?)
Whatever happened to “No taxation without political representation?” Killed by a thousands cuts.
Esme Stallard, BBC
Countries have agreed a global deal to tackle shipping emissions, after nearly ten years of negotiations. The agreement covers the vast majority of the world’s commercial shipping and means that starting in 2028, ship owners will have to use increasingly cleaner fuels or face fines. The deal was nearly derailed after Saudi Arabia forced a last minute vote and the US pulled out of talks in London – but it eventually passed on Friday. Small island states and environmental groups were angry that a blanket tax was not agreed to and called the deal “unfit for purpose”.
The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) will be able to take $380 per ton of “carbon” emitted.
It will require owners of large international vessels to increase their use of less carbon intensive fuels or face a penalty of up to $380 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions they emit from burning fuel.
The vote was requested by Saudi Arabia, who did not support the agreement, and this position was shared by a dozen other oil-producing nations, including Russia.
Although they opposed the proposal, they will be bound to implement it because they are members of the IMO.
The targets are impossible but that’s a feature, not a bug
The UN decided the world’s shipping will reach Net Zero in 2050, as if we will all learn to sail or use solar powered ships. But the UN surely knows the targets are wildly unreasonable, and that’s the point. Ships that don’t manage to convert to hydrogen or ammonia, or run on palm oil or fairy dust, will be able to “pay more” to the UN instead.
The great thing about impossible targets is they make for endless cash cows for fat parasites to dine out on:
Figures vary depending on the fuel type but the World Economic Forum estimates that these green fuels are 3-4 times more expensive to produce.
“There is no fuel as cheap as diesel that ships use today because when we take crude oil out of the ground, we take out all the nice bits, that’s the kerosene for aviation, diesel and petrol for cars,” said Faig Abbasov, programme director for maritime transport at think tank Transport and Environment.
“Whatever is left at the bottom, that’s what ships burn. So no fuel will be as cheap as this because not much energy goes into its production,” he said.
It is estimated that the agreement could achieve an 8% reduction in emissions for the sector by 2030, according to the maritime consultancy UMAS.
So they will use $40 billion to cut 8% off 3% of the human global emissions by 2030 — cutting mankind’s whole output by 0.25%, an amount too small to measure, but employing a lot of UN people to do it. And the money will go help the poor starving NGO’s who ran out of USAID money, right?
Any money raised from the penalties will be put into a “Net Zero” fund, with money spent on scaling up greener fuels and supporting developing countries.
It is this “redistribution” that prompted the US delegation to pull out of the talks on Tuesday night. A letter was sent by the US to all countries at the IMO negotiations saying any levy would cause inflation and if it was passed then “reciprocal measures” would be taken.
The deal was nearly derailed after Saudi Arabia forced a last minute vote and the US pulled out of talks in London – but it eventually passed on Friday.
The US delegation left the proceedings, but apparently that doesn’t matter because they don’t have many boats (can we get an exemption too?)
The US only flags 178 cargo ships that represent 0.57% of worldwide commercial shipping tonnage.
Once it starts it will never end. If the UN could raise the tax because they felt like it, what would stop them? Nothing — until the big trading nations get fed up, and either pull out of the UN or send in the aircraft carriers.
More than ever, we need an alliance in the Anglosphere that just says “No”. End the UN. It has failed at the only tasks it was set up to do — stop wars and end pandemics.
H/t David E
9.9 out of 10 based on 104 ratings
9.1 out of 10 based on 12 ratings
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8.1 out of 10 based on 27 ratings
8.8 out of 10 based on 18 ratings
By Jo Nova
Labor wants the poor to subsidize the rich EV car buyers
Good news: The conservative opposition has promised to reduce the fines to zero for car manufacturers who sell “too many” diesel and petrol cars. This effectively negates the New Vehicle Emissions Standards (NVES), even though the Coalition says they will keep the standards (whatever that means).
As standards were ratcheted up the fines could be as much as $25,000 on the largest utes and 4WDs.
For a nation of petrol-heads, it’s amazing this diabolical policy hasn’t sparked outrage, probably only because it was buried in complexity. An honest government would have added a fee or a tax directly onto the kinds of cars they didn’t want sold — they could call it a pollution tax to cover the cost of the damage. The reason the Labor Government didn’t do that is because the unwashed masses would be revolting in the streets. So they make a rule that manufacturers have to sell a certain percentage of “good cars” that make future weather nicer (in theory), and then they can tell abject lies to the public like “it’s up to the car companies” and “manufacturers don’t have to pass the costs on” — as if any profit making entity can absorb fines of millions without raising prices.
The sole point of the NVES was to punish petrol and diesel car buyers and subsidize EV manufacturers, and pretend the government was not doing the taxing and subsidizing because the money didn’t pass through any bureaucrats hands, even though the sole cause of the money flow was indeed the government.
By Greg Brown, Sarah Elks, and Joanne Panagopoulis, The Australian
The Coalition will abolish fines for car companies who breach targets under Australia’s first vehicle emissions standards scheme, in a major election commitment aimed at taking down the Albanese government’s claim that the price of petrol cars will not increase under Labor’s policy.
The Australian can reveal the Coalition will retain the New Vehicle Emissions Standards, but will not punish companies financially that do not meet the tough carbon goals. Coalition sources said the policy, to be announced during the campaign, has the backing of the sector.
Companies that miss the yearly target need to pay heavy fines or buy credits from suppliers that overperform, with industry modelling predicting car suppliers will be on the hook for $2.7bn of fines by the end of the decade.
The effect of the pseudo car tax would be to limit sales of petrol and diesel cars by raising their prices, or taking them off the market, while reducing EV car prices — a policy that takes money from the poor in the outer suburbs and country areas in order to subsidize cars bought by inner city rich people. As petrol and diesel cars became more expensive, obviously their second hand price would increase as well.
These people are professional liars:
Chris Bowen (Energy Minister) implies the Labor policy has reduced the cost of EVs in Australia already (even before it started).
Mr Bowen said. “When we came to office there were no models available under $45,000; now there’s eight. That is our policy starting to work with a lot more to do.”
Somehow fines and penalties “increase the options” — as if stupid companies overseas were making cheap electric cars but forgot to send them to Australia:
Jim Chalmers said the NVES was about introducing more options. “That will put downward pressure on prices over time,” the Treasurer said.
Peter Dutton needs to find short one-liner ways to sell this policy because it’s a vote winner.
The neutered NVES would be barely an aspirational fantasy goal without the fines. Presumably the opposition decided to keep it anyway just so the Labor Party couldn’t hit them easily with one-liners that “Liberals don’t care about pollution”. Where is our honest national conversation? Gone with the billion-dollar biased ABC, and government regulations that stop new competition arising in free-to-air media.
In fact the NVES is purely about CO2 emissions, not about pollution. Carbon dioxide is an asset to a dry agricultural nation. The Coalition should axe the NVES entirely. Petrol and diesel drivers help feed the poor.
In the UK, the same sort of rules were already in place, and due to the awful consequences on the car industry, even the untouchable Keir Starmer Government, years away from the next election, is already cutting fines by 20% and exempting British manufacturers like McLaren, Aston Martin and Bentley. Fines in the UK were as high as £15,000 per car, and set to get worse. The UK government has also added in all kinds of what they call “flexibilities” to keep the illusion that they are not back-tracking, while finding excuses to reduce the penalties. But of course, flexibilities are Soviet style complexities that means everyone needs more lawyers and accountants and more bureaucrats. It still feeds The Blob. It’s not the free market that brought the mass production of cheap cars to the unwashed masses in mere decades.
Complexity helps the rich and punishes the poor, it just hides it better. The opposition should wage a war against these deceptive schemes. All the same outcomes could be achieved through honest simpler tax plans. Only liars and cheats want to dupe the voters with hidden subsidies that help the rich.
9.9 out of 10 based on 99 ratings
9.6 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
By Jo Nova
Think of Net Zero Targets as a self imposed Carbon Tariff
If you just want cheap coal power, you can’t, not without paying the wind and solar tariff, the battery clause, the pumped hydro pill, and the interconnector addendum.
Tonight the US Tariffs have been paused for 90 days (nearly everywhere bar China) while everyone negotiates, which was no doubt the plan all along, but the invisible Green Tariffs are so much worse. Instead of just being applied once at the border, they multiply like Ebola throughout the national economy — adding an invisible hit to anything that needs heating, cooling, feeding or moving — which is everything, sooner or later, and often many times.
There’s no silver lining, no accidental benefit, we’re not changing the weather, we won’t make more crops, we’re not making cheaper electricity, and we’re not bringing factories back home, we’re shipping ours off to China (where they use coal). For every green job we artificially forced into existence we know the higher energy costs they lead to will destroy 2 – 5 real jobs.
And we’re not even symbolically leading the world in some fashionable cat-walk, because no one is following. We could kid ourselves once that this Politburo style artificial quest might lead to new technologies the rest of the world wanted, but those days are over. The world doesn’t want EVs or solar “farms” much, it wants AI, and that means big and cheap energy.
David Pearl in The Australian a few weeks ago (before the new round of tariffs were added):
…our ever-rising electricity prices are a direct and entirely foreseeable result of the two major parties’ commitment to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions.
This policy is a self-imposed monster tariff on our entire $2.7 trillion economy, dwarfing Trump’s hit on our steel and aluminium sales to the US, which account for less than 0.2 per cent of our exports overall.
And it is not a one-off shock, but a ratcheting up of energy costs that started more than a decade ago and must – if the share of wind and solar in our grid is to grow, as both major parties want – continue for the next quarter century.
Not for one or two years, but for decades to come. It is deeply regressive, hurting low-income Australians more than those on higher incomes in exactly the same way an increase in the rate of the GST would. But unlike the GST, it delivers not a cent of revenue to government for hospitals and schools, but instead requires billions to be spent on subsidies each year for everyone harmed by it.
So as the economy progressively weakens, the net-zero fiscal sinkhole must grow each year: a recipe for future financial collapse.
David Pearl is a former Treasury assistant secretary.
Image by Amy from Pixabay
9.9 out of 10 based on 115 ratings
8.5 out of 10 based on 12 ratings
By Jo Nova
Trump switches on the giant dormant coal infrastructure of the US
In the last twenty years 770 coal turbines have been switched off in the US, and Donald Trump wants to turn as many back on as he can.
Any moment now President Trump is expected to sign an executive order that will boost coal mining, keep old coal power stations running and restart shuttered coal plants. The word is that the US government will define coal as a “mineral” which allows him to use presidential wartime authority to speed up approvals for coal mines, and to bypass environmental red tape and even prioritize exploration and mining on federal lands.
US agencies will be told to rescind any policies that aim to “transition away from coal” or “otherwise establish preferences against using fossil fuels”. The country with the largest known coal reserves in the world is now planning to increase coal exports.
Furthermore Trump will ask the Energy Department to consider whether coal should be listed as a ‘critical mineral’ — something described as a ‘coveted status’ which activates even more emergency powers.
Shares of coal companies in the US are up 11 to 18%, and the whole Australian obsession with closing our plants suddenly looks like a quaint book club garden party.
While this will trigger the green brigade, they have nothing but the usual fantasies and wowser scoffing.
[The Guardian] Energy experts say any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary because natural gas is cheaper and there is a durable market for renewable energy such as wind and solar power no matter who holds the White House.
Except there is barely any market for pure wind and solar power without truckloads of government subsidies. As soon as subsidies end, the solar panel companies go out of business.
And of course, the intellectual titans hope pure scorn and mindless indignation will scare people away like little teenage girls:
“What’s next, a mandate that Americans must commute by horse and buggy?” said Kit Kennedy, managing director of power at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
This changes everything
As this news breaks, Australia is 3.5 weeks away from an election. We have the third largest coal reserves in the world, and are often the world’s largest exporter of coal. Despite this, we treat coal like it’s kryptonite.
It’s time to break this spell. The last week of tariff turmoil has been tough for the conservative opposition here in the shadow of teetering stock markets, but this could flip that effect the other way, if the Coalition can peg the Government as being irrationally anti-coal, pointlessly out of touch, and still fighting the last war while the real world steams on.
This is the golden opportunity for Peter Dutton. This is the moment when Australia could run industrial AI datacenters on the cheapest coal power in the world. Our brown coal plants are still winning wholesale bids at less than 3 cents a kilowatt hour. We don’t have to be just a quarry where people do raindances to control the weather.
By Ari Natter and Jennifer Dlouhy, Bloomberg
President Donald Trump is moving to expand the mining and use of coal inside the US, a bid to power the boom in energy-hungry data centers and revive a flagging US fossil fuel industry.
The steps including emphasizing the US is back in the business of selling coal mining rights on federal land and ordering the rock be designated as a critical mineral. Other actions include accelerating the export of US coal and related technologies.
Nevertheless, the executive order underscores Trump’s commitment to tapping America’s coal resources as a source of both electricity to run data centers and heat to forge steel. The president and top administration officials have made clear boosting coal-fired power is a top priority, one they see as intertwined with national security and the US standing in a global competition to dominate the artificial intelligence industry.
Coal advocates were cheering the planned action Tuesday.
Trump wants to fix the electricity grid crisis:
“Despite countless warnings from the nation’s grid operators and energy regulators that we are facing an electricity supply crisis, the last administration’s energy policies were built on hostility to fossil fuels, directly targeting coal,” said Rich Nolan, the president of the National Mining Association. “The explosive growth and parallel energy demands of artificial intelligence and electrification have rendered that path not just unsustainable but plainly reckless.”
Mining.com lays out how big the coal industry used to be in the US. There is a massive skeleton of infrastructure Trump is working to revive:
Coal accounts for about 15% of power generation in the US today, down from more than half in 2000, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Since 2000, about 770 individual coal-fired units have shuttered, according to data from Global Energy Monitor, with more set to close.
No other major coal country is tying themselves into knots to keep the coal underground, or doing their best to stop using it. Australia is a basket case.
Image by Dorothe from Pixabay
10 out of 10 based on 105 ratings
6.8 out of 10 based on 13 ratings
By Jo Nova
Today’s magic trick is how to make electricity look cheaper by taking money from children
Tomorrow — we pretend to control inflation by printing more money.
The Labor Party tried to control the weather with our power stations and promised us it be would cheaper. For some reason that every engineer can explain, they damaged the electricity grid and electricity got more expensive.
In order to hide this, they have to borrow money to pay us so they can pretend electricity is slightly less expensive, and inflation figures are not so scary. Since our children will pay off that debt one day somehow, the Labor Government is nicking the money from babies and telling us how compassionate they are.
“This is hip pocket help for households, and it recognises that people are still under pressure,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC.
“Without our assistance and without our interventions, electricity would be more expensive.”
More expensive than what Jim?
The next magical $150 electricity rebate to households will cost $1.8 billion dollars. Think of it as a performance art, a piece of theatre, or a band-aid on a gaping wound. For Australians this will be the third year of rebates, so the total cost, respectively, is $3b in 2023 , plus $3.5b in 2024, plus $1.8b for a total of $8.3 billion.
There’s no intellectual merit in the rebate, it’s not like it’s an incentive scheme for homeowners to “stay alive” or use more or less electricity. The sole point of the rebate is to hide the failure of the governments energy plan. It’s to bury the market signal which is screaming “bad, bad, bad” so the Labor Government can do more of the same “bad things” that got us into trouble in the first place.
The PM also thinks giving away money reduces inflation:
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the cost of living measure would put downward pressure on inflation.
We wonder why any country ever suffered inflation when the solution is so easy?
$8 billion in Rebates could have made electricity cheaper for 30 years
Unfortunately a “rebate” doesn’t reduce real electricity prices or inflation, except in advertising and ABC news (sorry, I repeat myself). If the government is going to incur a debt on our behalf, it could have used this $8 billion to buy at least four new gas plants and an advanced efficient coal plant, any or all of which would have reduced the price of electricity for 30 years to come (or 60 years in the case of a coal plant).
For reference the cost of the 660MW Hunter Power Project is expected to be around $1b.
China started building 92GW of coal plants last year, which is twice as much coal power as Australia has.
9.9 out of 10 based on 122 ratings
7.9 out of 10 based on 14 ratings
By Jo Nova
In a brave election promise, the Australian Labor Party want poor people to help pay for batteries for rich Australians.
The discount battery deals will only be suitable for people wealthy enough to own a home with solar panels, and who happen to have ten thousand dollars sitting around that they don’t want to use or expect any return on for nearly a decade. There can’t be too many of those.
The true cost of home batteries is about $13,000, so the $4,000 discount still leaves a big bill. And the savings for electricity bills are estimated to be around $1,100 per household each year. So no one comes out ahead for nine or ten years, and that’s assuming their battery is still useful at age ten or eleven, and their house hasn’t caught fire.
This policy isn’t a winner for the rich or the poor. Because batteries are essentially uneconomic, the policy screws the whole country. The only beneficiaries are the solar and battery installers and Chinese industrialists. Them, and the politicians who got us into this mess. To avoid admitting they were wrong, they’d probably like to trick Australians into buying the batteries that a renewables grid “has to have” but no one can afford.
We only got into this mess because the government forced poor people to subsidize solar panel installations for rich people, and then hid it deep inside electricity bills. Ultimately this time too, the poor will end up paying — even though the wealthy pay the most tax, this scheme will be done on borrowed money, or buried in electricity bills.
Throwing bad money after terrible money
For anyone connected to a large networked grid — the only possible benefit of a battery is to make surplus solar panels slightly less useless.
Right now Australia is so overinstalled with solar panels that 1 in 3 homes has them, and the surge of power at lunchtime has become like a toxic waste. It threatens grid stability, costs money to dispose of, and forces large generators to switch off or operate inefficiently. Even large scale solar and wind power have to shut down.
With four million rooftop panels, the situation is such a problem most states are demanding new panels have remote control switches, not so they can be turned on, but so they can be turned off. In Sydney, new charges are starting to apply to solar panel owners who dump their unneeded electricity on the grid. In the Northern Territory, they’re just leaving solar plants permanently disconnected, baking in the sun, to avoid the risk they’ll knock out Darwin’s grid, like they did in Alice Springs.
The solar boom at noon distorts the market so wildly, it pushes reliable generators out of business, or forces them to raise their prices for the rest of the day, so they cover their costs. Industry chiefs admit investors don’t want to build many new generators anymore because of the midday glut.
Go Labor Go, fight for those Green-Teal seats
The Labor Party are fighting for the Green vote, but thankfully, the opposition are not. As long as conservatives keep pointing out the pain to the working class, and the unfairness of this, it will suck the moralistic fun out of buying a few Green voters.
Next, if the conservatives could admit renewables are a dead-end, and weather control is a fantasy, they could start explaining why wind and solar power are guaranteed to make system wide electricity more expensive. Then they will really fire up the voters…
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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