Unplug the Privatised Power Market

Watching our floundering PM and his fawning energy minister trying to convince a sceptical electorate that they have the answers to our power problems was sickening — a mix of hype and hope devoid of truth or practical plans.

With no plan whatsoever, Turnbull boldly claimed that this announcement would make sure we meet our emission targets and achieve reliability of supply while simultaneously providing investor certainty to the power industry. Prices would come down as a result, he promised — declining as a result of nothing more than our PM’s hype. Lacking even a nodding familiarity with modesty, he even claimed to have a better-than-fair inkling by how much they would come down!

The facts are that over recent years we have been cursed by very bad decision-making on one hand and lack of forward policy planning on the other. This is has left state and federal governments checkmated as far as power and water policy is concerned. Crippling shortages of the electricity that is the vital input for all of modern life are now inevitable, and those shortages and associated high cost will cripple our productive capacity and humble the economy. While Mr Turnbull’s greatest demonstrated skill so far has been a schemer’s talent for repaying a leader’s loyalty with the point of a knife, even someone so imbued with his own magnificence must know that his “reforms’ of the past week can never correct the bad, mad green policies he promoted so assiduously, as per the video below.

In wailing about the increased cost of power distribution, many reasons are suggested, except the most relevant and costly. The only way the states could sell the “poles and wires” for an exorbent price was to guarantee would-be purchasers a very high return on their investments. Guess who is paying for this generosity by our governments to entities not operating in the national interest?

Until we take back control of power production and transmission and make them entities owned in perpetuity by the people, we will never have the energy security that allows our producers to compete with the rest of the world. Moreover, unless and until that happens, no government will dare to cross the entrenched interests pocketing their green subsidies and revelling in their dominance. Proof, you say? Just look at this week’s wan initiatives and their minimal impact on AGL

Why are our governments checkmated? Two words: policy paralysis.

While our governments have been spending money on non-income earning infrastructure to buy votes in our cities; the income producing infrastructure we need to keep pace with our growing population (among the fastest in the world) has been neglected for at least 30 years.

It does not matter what hair-brained schemes Turnbull and Frydenberg come up with now, the reality of their policy paralysis and lack of vision will be insufficient power to keep the lights; insufficient, too, to protect our ability to grow and process our own food.

The final move to checkmate will be when as a result of over reliance on the Snowy Scheme to supply the increasing peak loads, the scheme runs out of water. This will be about 2 years into the next dry period.

No water, no peak power, no new reliable power production.

Bad luck, Australia, you once had so much promise. Now, though, it’s almost game over.