Albo is a liar. Not a conniving liar like ScoMo. A dumb liar like a political bovver boy:
Professor Holden said Mr Banks had “raised a number of totally legitimate concerns that I and plenty of others have raised”.
Professor Holden said there was a difference between safeguarding the sovereign manufacturing of essential products like medicines. Solar panels, he said, was “a very, very different proposition”.
After Mr Banks joined all his successors, including incumbent Danielle Wood, in condemning the policy of loans, grants, subsidies and investment incentives as a return to protectionism, Mr Albanese said Mr Banks did not understand the policy in full, nor appreciate its objectives.
“The world’s round, not flat, that’s why he’s wrong,” the prime minister said.
Mr Albanese said the scheme was predominantly about loans, such as those he announced on Wednesday to help kick-start two critical minerals projects, as well as investment incentives that will be announced in the budget, to attract private capital, rather than subsidies.
Ad hominem is not argument, Albo. Nor is making stuff up.
The notion of building solar panels in Australia is so messed up that it is hard to know where to begin.
- Australia invented solar power in 1970/80s.
- UNSW was the world’s leading centre of IP for solar technology.
- It was all sold to China for pennies under John Howard.
- Then we sold China all our gas via a cartel, meaning it had monopoly power to set ridiculous prices at home.
Today, Australia imports most of its own solar technology from China, which makes it from cheap Aussie gas.
Now, Albo wants to complete the debacle by using taxpayer funds to recreate a much more expensive version of the supply chain at home.
Exactly whose IP is he going to use? Former Australian turned Chinese? Where’s he going to get the cheap energy? By repurchasing our gas from China?
Instead, how about we briefly examine the above history and return to first principles?
We can’t get our solar IP back. But what we can do is stop hollowing ourselves by allowing energy cartels to destroy what heavy manufacturing we have left, including plastics, which also go into solar panels:
Unions and Orica boss Sanjeev Gandhi have warned that Qenos may not be the last company to fall, with AWU national secretary Paul Farrow warning that energy-intensive industries were “genuinely living on the brink”.
Qenos was put into administration this week by its new owners, companies associated with industrial property developer Logos. Administrators McGrathNicol have flagged the permanent closure of Qenos’s Sydney manufacturing plants, and substantial doubt surrounds the future of the company’s Altona plant in Melbourne.
Mr Farrow’s comments were echoed by Orica managing director Sanjeev Gandhi, who told The Australian Qenos’s closure should be a clear signal of the distress felt by other major manufacturers, particularly those that use gas as a key input.
Albo needs to fix the goddamned east coast gas market. The current $12Gj price cap is double what it should be. Activate the ADGSM as well and guarantee local supply first.
Cancel supply contracts with China, which is reselling Aussie gas on the open market at a profit because it is over-contracted.
Fixing gas fixes everything in manufacturing, crashes household energy bills, and makes Net Zero a breeze.
It might even make solar panel manufacturing viable.
