This weekend’s Treasury of Common Sense with Luke Grant at Radio 2GB took direct aim at the Albanese government’s energy policy failures, along with the extortionate cost of Australian housing.
I also explained how politicians use the “art of distraction” to divert attention away from issues of national significance and policy failure.
Below are the highlights of the energy topic. Listen to the interview above to hear the rest.
Australians hit with another energy shock:
Australians have seen their gas and electricity prices rocket. And the primary reason why they’ve rocketed is because, on the East Coast of Australia, we are the only gas exporting jurisdiction in the world that does not reserve our gas for domestic use.
Despite the fact that we export over 70% of our gas on the East Coast—we export so much of it that Japan and China are actually re-exporting it for profit—we have created a domestic gas shortage. And we have driven up the cost of gas on the East Coast to extortionate levels.
That has also driven up electricity prices because gas is used as a firming power for electricity. Whenever we don’t have enough renewables to meet electricity demand, or enough coal, we always use gas as a backup.
And because we have made gas prices so expensive, it has forced up electricity costs as well. So, Australians have been hit twice.
We received more bad news this week with the Australian Financial Review reporting that New South Wales gas customers have just received notification from AGL, Origin and Energy Australia that from the 1st of August, their gas bills are going to rise by another 10%.
This energy cost inflation is creating a whole bunch of problems for the nation.
This 10% increase in gas prices is going to feed directly into Australia’s inflationary and cost-of-living pressures.
It also guarantees that we are going to have higher income taxes. The federal budget included energy subsidies, which are going to have to become permanent if we keep having these excessively high gas prices because we have stuffed the market.
The federal government is going to keep dishing out subsidies, which means we are going to pay through our taxes. Those subsidies will effectively be going to the foreign owned gas companies instead of just doing the right thing and reserving our gas, which is what every other place in the world does.
These high gas prices are also going to wreck the energy transition because they are prolonging the life of coal fired power stations.
Australia’s manufacturing sector is closing down because it cannot afford to compete in the world market because its energy prices are too high.
So, these high energy prices are wrecking the economy and ensuring that our economy is less diversified and even more reliant on China for imports and everything.
All Anthony Albanese needed to do at the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War was trigger the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism (ADGSM). This was brought in by the Turnbull government and allows the federal government to reserve gas in times of crisis.
Albo refuses to use the ADGSM. As a result, we are paying the cost via higher energy prices and inflation, manufacturing shutting down, etc.
It is absolute policy lunacy that Australia can be one of the world’s biggest gas exporters but also have a domestic shortage and pay some of the world’s highest prices.
You couldn’t mess it up even more than we have in Australia.
