Albo’s energy shock rolls on today with some easing in the gas price to $16.50Gj easing power prices as well:
Meanwhile, Labor’s Mad King is busy pimping the openly criminal gas cartel:
Resources Minister Madeleine King will issue a full-throated defence of coal, gas and other minerals in keeping the economy going as Australia and the world develop technologies needed to decarbonise.
“Without Australia’s resources sector, the world doesn’t have net zero,” Ms King will say, pushing back at elements of her own party.
Urging the Queensland government to make available more acreage for gas companies to extract under the state’s domestic reservation scheme, Ms King says the best solution to the tight domestic and international gas market is to pump more gas.
“The Queensland gas industry is doing the heavy lifting to ensure there is adequate supply in the two most populous states in the nation,” she says, in a reference to NSW and Queensland.
“I know that the Queensland gas industry is working hard to boost supply, while supply elsewhere is in rapid decline,” Ms King says in a thinly veiled swipe at Labor-led Victoria, where moratoriums and policy decisions to exit gas are hobbling the industry.
…“We will carefully balance meeting energy needs at home with LNG producers’ contractual obligations, and our commitment to working with international partners to address global energy challenges.
“We want to work with gas and LNG producers in Australia to secure industry-led solutions. I thank the producers on Curtis Island and their joint-venture partners for their constructive participation in discussions so far as we drive toward a more sustainable gas supply system on the east coast.”
“Industry-led solutions”? What on earth is Mad King doing? This is a criminal conspiracy operating in broad daylight. From the ACCC:
• The upstream market is highly concentrated and dominated by the three LNG exporters and their associates. In 2021, the three LNG exporters and their associates had influence over close to 90% of the 2P reserves in the east coast, through a combination of their direct interests in 2P reserves, associates, JVs and exclusivity arrangements. This highlights the effective control that the LNG exporters have over the supply and development of gas in the east coast, as well as competition in the domestic market.
• JVs can adversely affect competition if participants do not put in place and adhere to robust ring-fencing arrangements that prevent the sharing of commercially sensitive information, 8 with other projects in which JV participants have an interest. A JV participant can also have the incentive and opportunity to exploit their position in a JV to delay the development of gas if it improves the participant’s competitive position in other projects.
• Joint marketing by incorporated and unincorporated JVs is more prevalent than we expected, with the LNG exporters and some other producers engaging in joint marketing in the domestic market without authorisation. This results in a material reduction in the number of producers competing to supply gas into the domestic market.9
• Exclusivity provisions in GSAs entered into between domestic producers (as sellers) and LNG exporters (as buyers) are restricting the ability of domestic producers to compete to supply gas into the domestic market. These provisions can also reduce the incentive that domestic producers have to develop gas over time and result in development decisions being based on the requirements of the LNG exporters, rather than the domestic market.
• Mergers and acquisitions of other producers, tenements or interests in JVs by larger producers, can result in a reduction in producers competing to supply gas into the market and slow the progress of gas development.
Together with the high degree of concentration in this part of the market, these arrangements contribute to a lack of effective upstream competition in the east coast. They may also increase the risk of coordinated conduct and increase the market power of the LNG exporters. This is concerning, given the supply conditions that are expected to prevail in the east coast in 2023 and beyond, and the reliance that will be placed on the LNG exporters to supply more gas into the domestic market.
Entering into these types of arrangements without authorisation risks breaking the restrictive trade practices provisions in Part IV of the CCA if they amount to cartel conduct, or have the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition.
While in the past producers may have considered that these arrangements would not substantially lessen competition, in a concentrated and tight market the effect on competition can be heightened. We will continue to review some of these arrangements and, where appropriate, consider enforcement action.
Producers should also consider whether they could implement changes to their arrangements to help improve competition and the timely supply of gas to the market as a matter of priority.
Take a look at Alan Kohler’s brilliant little video and tell me we need “industry-led solutions”:
I can’t discount the possibility that the Mad King is playing possum with the criminal cartel. If so, she deserves an academy award.
But, this is the woman that will be negotiating an outcome on domestic reservation with the criminal cartel over the next few weeks. It is hardly encouraging for the Australians that put her into office to watch as she pimps those that are criminally ripping them off.
And let’s not forget that 71% of this gas is going to China. On that front the news is not very reassuring, either.
Beijing’s iron fist is donning a velvet glove. Of sorts. Yesterday’s major ambassadorial address was the new face of China. Xiao from marketing. Dispatched from Beijing to rebrand (or is that Albo’s “reset” ) its relationship with Australia.
Here he is:
Sadly, the truth is that nothing has changed. The same bully is in charge of the same autocratic system with me same goals.
This is a shift in tactics, not strategy. China’s engagement with Australia is still all about capturing and cowing it to serve as the quarry to a rising IndoPacific despotic empire.
That implicitly means adhering to the 14 conditions to end democracy. Let us recall those lest we forget:
We should take a moment to acknowledge the stunning contribution to the national interest by PM Scott Morrison for inducing this extraordinary confession. He may have been maddening, but to Beijing, he was outright destabilising and the result was letting the plan slip. A truly amazing moment in Australian history that has not gotten the attention it deserves.
So far as I can recall, ScoMo is the only world leader before Nancy Pelosi to expose the true face of the CCP.
Back to the present and let me illustrate a few of the untruths yesterday uttered by Ambassador Xiao. The first is this:
“Our Foreign Minister and also our people have made it pretty clear on several occasions that China came to the Solomon Islands upon request of the government of that country and there’s no reason for us to refuse to help,” he said.
“But the purpose is help them to stabilise, to prosper, and to improve. There is no intention for China to set up the so-called military base in Solomon Islands.”
Yet China is busy turning the islands into an imperial satrap mini-me:
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has submitted to parliament a bill proposing a change to the constitution that would delay next year’s scheduled election, officials said on Tuesday.
The opposition leader of Solomon Islands has blasted a push by the prime minister to delay the 2023 election, saying the move is the “power grab” he foresaw when Manasseh Sogavare signed a controversial security deal with China earlier this year.
“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind this is a power grab,” Matthew Wale said of the bill introduced by Sogavare’s government to extend parliament. “It’s all orchestrated.”
While it is aiming to buy a nice little island. For Xi Jinping’s new personal retreat I think not:
A Chinese state-owned company is negotiating to buy a deep-water port and World War II airstrip in Solomon Islands, as new documents detail how money from Beijing has helped keep the Pacific nation’s controversial leader in power.
As a battle for influence plays out in the region, an investigation by Four Corners has found China is aggressively pursuing economic opportunities across the Solomons to boost Beijing’s strategic interests.
One asset being targeted by China is a hardwood forestry plantation on the island of Kolombangara, which features a protected harbour, deep-water port and an airstrip.
The Solomons is a great example of what China also wants from Australia. To agree to whatever it desires by corrupting its free system. And to recycle the propaganda that disguises it. To kow tow, in other words. Not just in word but in deed. To agree to give up freedom and become a tributary state replete with gulags to enforce it. Like Hong Kong before it and now Taiwan:
Taiwan’s 23 million people face a campaign of re-education if the self-governed island is taken over by China, with China’s top diplomat to Australia saying Beijing was set to use “any means necessary” to achieve reunification.
“There’s absolutely no room for us to compromise” over Taiwan, ambassador Xiao Qian told the National Press Club of Australia, warning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government not to take sides.
I urge you to consider that China is only the latest incarnation of an imperialist Great Power. They all act the same way. From Rome to Charlemagne, from Genghis Khan to post-enlightenment Europe and, yes, the United States.
They all seek to impose their will on weaker states and expand their sphere of influence.
In that historical sense, Australia has been fantastically fortunate to have had a liberal imperial overlord since WWII. Trading it for a violently illiberal version remains completely insane no matter how smooth the message.
So, what did Albo’s cowards give us in reply? Nothing:
Senator Wong declined to comment on the Chinese envoy’s mischaracterisation of Australia’s policy. ANU National Security College head Rory Medcalf said the ambassador’s performance was “a bracing eye-opener for … anyone who still imagined a reset was possible or desirable”.
At least Peter Dutton stood up:
Peter Dutton says standing up for Australia’s national interest is “not a condemnation of people of Chinese heritage” and declared he would not back down from attacking the hostile actions of Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party.
The Opposition Leader on Wednesday warned against appeasing Mr Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin and said Australia must “call out bad behaviour” amid unprecedented military, cyber and foreign interference threats.
Albo’s cowards appear to be operating in some delusional state of shock as they continue to pursue a platform that has been trashed by events. It remains to be seen if they can govern what is in front of them.
Or whether they are capable of defending Australians at all.
