JKM netback is sitting just above $13Gj today, while local spot gas prices are still threatening to violate the $12 contract price cap:
Local electricity prices continue to track the new global gas price shock higher:
On a QTRMA basis, $100MW/h prices are double what they should be.
Your bills have already priced this in over the last two years. Bills are now falling because instead of fixing the failed gas market, Treasurer Chickcn Chalmers is providing rebates in the budget.
He has sneakily shifted the gas rent seeker margins from your bill into your taxes where you won’t notice it.
Meanwhile, Australian heavy manufacturing is cooked by the contract gas price of $12Gj, if you can even get it at that:
Qenos owner ChemChina was talking to property developers at least nine months ahead of the sale of the Australian chemicals maker, it has emerged.
And administrator McGrathNicol this week confirmed to Qenos employees the total closure of its operations was the most likely outcome for the plastics manufacturer.
Yet, among this energy disarray, today’s arsehat prize goes not to any contemporary idiot but to the great man that started it all, John Howard:
“Our current Prime Minister wants us to believe that subsidies and incentives for certain enterprises are a world away from tariff protection and will be totally free of harmful consequences.
“That argument has not impressed Gary Banks and other economic commentators. Nor would it have impressed Bob Hawke in the early 1990s.”
Mr Howard warned the government was failing to take the hard decisions to lift productivity by slashing red tape or increasing flexibility in the workplace relations system. He also warned the government had misinterpreted Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which offers a suite of tax credits, subsidies and grants for businesses involved in the clean energy transition.
“The Prime Minister and his Treasurer have claimed that their new policy is all about building foundations. If they were serious about stronger foundations, they would reform and not further tighten our industrial relations system,” Mr Howard said.
“They would lighten, not increase, the regulatory burden on risk takers. Instead of beating his chest in falsely claiming that President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is an exercise in economic reform, he (Mr Albanese) would call it for what it is: a massive increase in government spending.”
What tripe. The facts are these:
- JH hardly supported any Hawke/Keating reforms.
- JH sold all our gas to China for $2Gj in ridiculous thirty-year agreements.
- JH did nothing as China bought up all of Australia’s world-beating solar IP across the millennium. If JH had done what Albo is proposing now, Australia would today be a solar manufacturing trillionaire.
- JH did nothing but delay the energy transition.
- JH made no effort to reserve East Coast gas.
In short, JH sold our energy endowment for a song to our deadliest long-term enemy, ensuring we couldn’t compete in any ETMs.
Albo’s plan to make Chinese solar panels at twice the price of those in China is idiotic.
But he learned such stupidity from the best.
