Australia’s most disastrous minister wouldn’t know manufacturing if it ran her down in a truck.
Resources Minister Madeleine King says the government’s Future Made in Australia bill that would create tax incentives for hydrogen production and critical minerals – which is not guaranteed to pass parliament but still being introduced – will show voters the Coalition’s opposition.
“The point is about putting forward a proposition that this government has come up with, with industry,” Ms King told ABC AM.
“Industry, indeed, has led the whole process of developing the production tax incentive.
No, not industry. Extractive industry. Mining and petroleum, to be precise.
How can this be labelled a “Made in Australia” bill when it is the opposite?
The East Coast gas cartel has so fulsomely captured Mad King that if it told her it had cured cancer, then she’d gleefully parrot the lines.
What the cartel actually does is push manufacturing into the sea via ludicrously expensive energy. Including the car industry in 2011.
And now a new shock has begun amid Australia’s energy off-peak gas season.
Electricity is bottoming out 50% above 2023.
Mad King was sent to the gas cartel to stop a similar shock during the Ukraine War of 2022. Instead, she capitulated to extortionate prices and fled to an oil platform on a flight paid for by the gas industry, where she hid from the media.
It took months more for other ministers to join the fight against the East Coast gas cartel, and while they all consulted instead of making policy, it delivered an inflation surge that is still dogging the RBA today.
Eventually, Mad King and her government abandoned all tough policies and settled on a $12Gj gas price cap. 400% higher than historical averages.
But even that was balderdash. The cap was not applied to the spot gas market, which is the relevant benchmark for electricity prices. So it offered virtually no price protection to anybody.
Ever since the $12Gj “cap” has instead operated as a price floor, and now, thanks to a bit of snow in Europe, the East Coast gas cartel is injecting a whole new inflation shock during our traditional energy off-season.
Albo’s poltroon treasurer is going to have to supersize his energy rebates just to avert another inflation shock, if he even has the brains to know it’s coming.
What a poetic end this would make for Albo’s fools, bookended by the East Coast gas export cartel they did so much to avoid confronting.
