No, you’re not imagining it. This week has been freezing cold. Either the federal election magically changed the climate overnight through the power of ‘virtue’ – or it’s Winter…
I suggested earlier that we attach little carbon-trackers to each member of Labor, the Greens, Teals, and Liberal moderates so that we can rank them in order of hypocrisy as they hop on private jets, chomp through steaks, and zip around in SUVs. That seems to be unnecessary as, less than a month out from the ‘climate saving election’, Labor has a genuine energy crisis on its hands caused by the relentless pursuit of renewables at the expense of traditional power generators.
New Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been forced to write to the ACCC regarding his concerns about ‘false and misleading or anti-competitive conduct’ within Australia’s gas and electricity market as bills are set to soar, driving up the cost of living to the point many Australians may not be able to heat their homes. Small power companies have even been telling their customers to ‘leave’ in preparation for a doubling of prices.
Is anyone considering adding the charging cost of an electric vehicle to this mix? Probably not.
A global constant has been discovered; the more renewables in the system, the more expensive power becomes. We’ve known this for a long time, but with a Labor government in charge, they may finally have to admit the reality. After all, salvation politics is all fun and games at the polling booth, but people are less enthused about ‘the climate’ when they can’t afford to turn the lights on.
The social media faction of the Left tried to trend #COALition yesterday (and honestly, it says a lot about their lacklustre Scrabble skills that it took them this long), but they remain eerily quiet on Labor’s coal backflip that saw Labor limping around the power grid, searching for (planet ruining?) coal.
Labor ministers joined in the childish wordplay, with Chris Bowen labelling advice from the Coalition on the energy crisis ‘as effective as advice from the captain of the Titanic on navigation skills’.
In this case, HMS Climate Change is a ship designed, built, bought, and captained by Labor and as it sinks into the ocean of energy reality, they are the ones that have to stand on the slanted deck and explain why there are no coal-based life rafts available to the shivering passengers – a situation that won’t be helped as private jet skis arrive to pick up the Teals from the first class cabins.
‘They [Labor] don’t know which way to jump at the moment. And you know, it’ll take them a while to find their feet,’ said Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton.
Yes, it will – especially with the ship listing sharply towards the darkness.
Labor has issued a plea to Australia’s remaining coal-fired power stations, begging them to churn themselves up to full capacity. A quarter of Australia’s ageing and politically injured coal-fired energy stations are offline at the moment. The absence of three power stations in Victoria and New South Wales along with the reduction of the Eraring and Callide power stations has left a serious market shortage right as freezing conditions have hit.
In a particularly brazen move, the Labor Party has demanded that the work being done at Callide be fast-tracked. According to Madeleine King, Labor’s Resources Minister, they must ‘get moving on fixing their plants right now’.
These would be the same coal plants that Labor promised the Australian people they would close down as soon as possible while branding the Liberal Party ‘coal killers’ and ‘fossil fools’.
‘In the very short term, what we really need to do is have the coal-fired power stations come back online because that is the missing piece of the puzzle right now,’ added king.
Coal remains the dominant market source of energy, but more importantly, it forms the bulk of the reliable baseload grid. The only reason Coal power stations are suffering from maintenance trouble is because they are operating into old age knowing that the government intends to destroy them in the near future. Other countries like China – who some of the Teal Independents praised for their ‘wonderful’ climate policies – replace their Coal-fired power stations at regular intervals.
Australia’s most important energy resource has been left to rot in the name of green politics.
This negligence is leading to an inevitable energy disaster that some have been warning about for years. The solution is not to do something sensible, such as start the long-overdue nuclear industry, but to lean into gas – which is also expensive and not exactly ‘Net Zero’.
Despite Labor spearheading the push to destroy, demonise, and dissolve the fossil fuel energy industry in Australia, Chris Bowen has turned around and blamed the Liberal Party for leaving, as he says, ‘Australia ill-prepared and our energy markets ill-prepared for the challenges we face today in relation to gas and energy supply.’
These are challenges that are self-made by Green energy policies.
Australia is not like Europe, hooked into Russian oil and gas. This country’s energy resources are among the richest on Earth, including our stockpile of Uranium that, if used properly, would see Australia with energy supplies to outlast the sun.
The only reason we have a ‘crisis’ is because politicians on both sides turned power generation into a lucrative social war.
Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.
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