As prime minister, Kevin Rudd (now Ambassador to the US) in his 2009 Monthly article said,
"Neo-liberal economic philosophy has its roots in the theories of Hayek and von Mises" and "Neo-liberals such as Alan Moran ... blahblahblah".
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Only a genuine buffoon makes such a connection but:-
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Thank You Kevin Read here (if you wish)
Thanks Albo! Australia is one of the worst-performing nations in the developed world
Spectator Australia, 12 July 2025​​
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One thing is certain about the government’s August productivity summit – there will be no policies adopted, and even fewer implemented, that might arrest the disastrous decline in Australia’s output per person. That decline can be measured in many ways, but it is non-controversial that output per head has fallen at least 5 per cent since 2022. Australia’s performance is just about the worst among nations in the developed world.
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The immediate cause of this disaster is a precipitous decline in investment, which is the key factor in labour productivity.
Australia’s investment level as a share of GDP was increasing rapidly in
Renewable energy exposed
Australia’s economy is facing a crisis fuelled by Net Zero
Spectator Australia, 5 July 2025​​
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There is an ethereal tone to the Australian debate on energy.
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The government is focused on what it regards as an inevitable transition to Net Zero emissions. This means replacement of coal by wind and solar and eventually by ‘green’ hydrogen from water. While ‘green’ hydrogen has suffered terminal judgements on its viability with proposed projects cancelled all over the world, including Australia’s largest green hydrogen project, the $12.5 billion plant and pipeline in Gladstone, the nation’s three energy regulators, acronymed as AEMO, AER, and AEMC, devise paths by which Net Zero based on wind and solar may be achieved.
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For its part, the Opposition remains in pursuit of a ....Read online .....pdf
Coalition no match for Labor’s ruthless Net Zero agenda
Spectator Australia, 25 June 2025​​
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For many years Australian policy has been moving backwards in the pursuit of cheap, reliable energy. The policy has now taken a further turn away from lowering costs, towards a focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions and thereby raising costs.
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As with other parts of the globe, carbon dioxide is emitted from various sources and the vast majority is re-absorbed in the plants, the soil, and the water resources. Simply because we have just about the lowest population and lowest levels of emissions per hectare in the world, Australia is a natural net sink for emissions.
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This has been amply demonstrated by many, i .....Read online .....pdf
Albanese must change his approach to Trump
Spectator Australia, 19 June 2025​​
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More than any US President in recent history, Donald Trump’s focus is upon the interests of the US itself. Promotion of other countries wealth and security is a by-product rather than a goal. A manifestation of Trump’s policy is his mistaken protectionist approach to trade policy as a promoter of greater US wealth. And he holds little back in beratingly disparaging US opponents and even friendly foreign heads of state (Zelensky, Macron, and South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa).
Trump recognises those seeking to usurp other nations as enemies. These include Islamic cultists (obviously Iran and its clients) but not ‘normal’ Islamic states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey. He views China as an hegemonist that threatens key allies and economic partners.
Renewable energy is doomed
Spectator Australia, 11 June 2025​​
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No sooner had the Prime Minister announced a roundtable on productivity when advice was being proffered on how further to reduce it. Electrical Trades Union national secretary, Michael Wright, urged the productivity roundtable to address delays in approving transmission, solar, and wind projects. This was in line with the Prime Miniister’s own predilection to harness this into creating the new forms of industry that are to accompany Australia’s transition to a renewable energy superpower.
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Yet it is the subsidies and regulatory favours governments have provided to these intrinsically high-cost energy sources that are at the root of the nation’s productivity slowdown. Energy is the life .....Read online .....pdf
Let’s Hope CIS Means ‘Can It, Stutchbury’
Quadrant Online, 5 June 2025​​
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Michael Stutchbury has been appointed to head up the Centre for Independent Studies, which along with the Institute of Public Affairs is the leading Australian think-tank addressing economic social and political issues from a conservative-cum-libertarian perspective. Stutchbury’s long media career culminated as Editor-in-Chief at the Australian Financial Review between 2011 and 2024, after which he became editor-at-large.
The AFR has long been in favour of the “transition” to renewable energy and its May 12 editorial on Matt Canavan’s bid for leadership (“Nats’ populism a threat to Liberals’ economic reset”) was despairing about a possible Coalition backsliding on net zero. This may not have been the hand of Stutchbury. But it is consistent with .....Read online .....pdf
You Get What You Vote For
Quadrant Online, 31 May 2025​​
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For its population, Australia is the most resource rich nation in the world but has spent almost 30 years impeding this from being fully materialised. The nation is now facing a critical juncture. People have re-elected a government that has delivered negative 5% income growth over its the three years in office and which promises more of the same measures that caused the decline.
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In contrast to its claims that as it is now focused on increasing that productivity the Labor government’s policies are focused on measures that will reduce this, the only way in which we can increase income levels.
The net cost of the Coalition
Spectator Australia, 23 May 2025​​
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Friends and foes alike are urging the Liberals and the Nationals to continue as a Coalition, but the cost of this may be unacceptable.
The Nationals had four essential conditions for retaining their Coalition membership. Three of those are relatively low threshold issues: permitting nuclear power, ensuring better telecommunication connectivity in the bush (as though this is not already available with Starlink), and some sort of development fund for the bush. In addition, there was a ridiculous suggestion about breaking up the major grocery chains – which would lead to a marked increase the price of groceries for everybody. The Liberals were castigated for not attempting to agree to those ..... Read online .....pdf
Amping up the Lunacy
Quadrant Online, 21 May 2025​​
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Now the Coalition has split we may be seeing the prologue of a libertarian/conservative political party. But the Nationals are not – at least yet -ready to take on this role. With Matt Canavan in a clear minority, the only difference the Nationals have from the Liberals is they want to permit nuclear, if anyone is inadequately risk averse to invest, perhaps limit subsidies to grid solar and wind by some unspecified amount, and force Coles and Woolies to divest stores. Maybe it is a start but there’s a long way to go to get back to a workable low cost energy policy and reduced government intrusion.​
We really need the teal Nationals and Liberals to form a separate party with the true conservatives to form a new party with Family First, One Nation and other conservative/libertarians. ..... Read online .....pdf
For Now, the Bliss of Ignorance
Quadrant Online, 8 May 2025​​
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Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said the focus of the second term of the Albanese government will be productivity. But Chalmers has never shown any understanding of how productivity – more output per unit of input – is achieved.​
He has presided over a record level of government spending with increases in debt planned for the next five years. This is debt that is incurred not to finance higher levels of infrastructure, which might facilitate productivity improvements, but to finance more social spending and government winner-picking industries like hydrogen power and renewables. Those particular expenditures are worse than .....
Diddler on the Roof
Quadrant Online, 28 April 2025​​
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Some primitive and isolated societies, when initially observing the wealth of foreigners, embraced “cargo cults”. Abandoning agriculture, they cleared vegetation to allow aircraft to land, thinking this would provide similar wealth. Instead, they experienced starvation. It is all too frequent for nations to face internally generated economic declines.
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Economic stagnation, and worse, has invariably followed adoption of the cult of scientific socialism. All triumphs of socialism prove to be short-lived: the expropriation of individuals’ private property brings wealth dissipation and
The Birth Dearth’s Coming Impact
Quadrant Online, 25 April 2025​​
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The German states lost between 30 and 40 per cent of their populations during the Thirty Year War of 1618-1648 but re-population gradually followed. Today we face depopulation from a different cause.
A stable population without net migration needs a birth rate of 2.1 per couple. In a recent post, Elon Musk drew attention to declining birth rates and instanced (South) Korea, which has a birth rate of 0.7. This, in the absence of net migration, means that within three generations — early in the next century — the country’s population will have fallen from its present 52 million to a mere 3 million. Many European countries as well as China (where the birth rate is 1.0) are heading in the same direction. Birth rates are much higher in poor na ..... Read here .....pdf
The Bipartisan Beggaring of Australia
Quadrant Online, 17 April 2025​​
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We have heard the pitches from the Coalition and Labor. They include oodles of money promised from an exchequer that had been depleted by the Coalition’s response to Covid and seen debts mount under the Albanese government. Both Labor and the Coalition promise to enrich the nation with policies involving more government interventions to correct the supposed shortcomings of markets in delivering housing, cheaper energy, and higher levels of productivity. For Labor, the solutions do not include removing the regulatory restraints that are the cause of the nation’s shortcomings in these matters. And even the Coalition addresses such measures only in general terms.
The ALP’s claim of greater economic competence is particularly audacious in light of its three years in office having delivered a 6% reduction in real per capita incomes – far and away the worst outcome in the OECD.
Name Your Poison, Australia
Quadrant Online, 10 April 2025​​
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While President Trump’s trade policies are, on their most generous interpretation, a ham-fisted attempt to roll-back other countries’ distortions, elsewhere his policies offer a blueprint for all governments seeking to improve their nations’ prosperity.
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He is taking measures to combat the productivity-suffocating corset of the Diversity Equity & Inclusion mantra, the enterprise-stifling environmental regulations, a tumescent bureaucracy, and excessive government spending, which he hopes to cut by 30 per cent (an outcome already achieved by the Milei government in Argentina). Above all, Trump has reversed the fixation on green power that has suppressed competitiveness ..... Read here .....pdf
The Trump Liberation Day tariffs and Australia
27 March 2025​​
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Trump has variously made the case for support for domestic production of goods, like semiconductors, that are of military importance. He has also called for a reindustrialisation of the US by bringing back home the products that are at the backbone of a modern and militarily powerful economy: steel, aluminium, and vehicles.
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In addition, he is pressuring gas importers to substitute Russian and other supplies (maybe Australian) for those from the US.
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Finally, he has extolled tariffs as a virtue that enables the US to prosper with much lower levels of domestic taxes, a view that puts him on a collision course with almost all economic thinking ever since Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations hit the bookshops in 1776.
Chalmers is wrong about energy costs
19 March 2025​​
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Treasurer Jim Chalmers has defended the government’s pledge to lower electricity prices by a third. He said:
‘If you look at the inflation numbers for the last year to the end of 2024, what we saw – that electricity prices were down a little over 25 per cent. And lest you want to think that that is all the rebate, most of that is the rebate, but they still would have gone down a bit over 15 per cent absent the rebate.’
He added, ‘In some parts of Australia, we are expecting some price pressures. And as the independent experts said at the time, that is primarily about the unreliability of the legacy parts of the energy network' ..... Read here .....pdf
Trump’s autarkic ambitions
17 March 2025​​
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The rationales Trump offers for his trade policy include those with some legitimacy which seek to put pressure on Canada and Mexico to prevent illegal migration and fentanyl crossing the border; ensure strategic industries are on located on US soil; and to level the playing field, particularly in:
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combatting subsidised exports to the US that are detrimental to domestic production. China is targeted because its government provides greater industry support than other governments. But even with China, the support (mainly soft loans) averages only 3 per cent of the selected firms’ revenues and is almost certainly at the cost to firms that are not favoured. ..... Read here .....pdf
Labor’s debt apocalypse is upon us
11 March 2025​​
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The Albanese government has spectacularly failed on every level. Instead of pricking the Covid-inspired spending balloon it inherited, Labor has poured debt-financed money into the economy bringing debt to its present $948 billion with another $200 billion earmarked for the next two years and $45 billion in off-budget spending through Rewiring the Nation, the Housing Australia Future Fund, and the National Reconstruction Fund.
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The period from the election of the Albanese government to the third quarter of 2024 saw Australian living standards fall by 5.3 per cent, more than those of any other OECD country and a near mirror image of the OECD average increase of 5.5 per cent. ..... Read here .....pdf
Whyalla: a leading edge in Australian industrial econocide
25 February 2025​​
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The attempts of the Commonwealth and South Australian governments to rescue the Whyalla steelworks is the latest ad hoc measure to paper over the cracks being created by Commonwealth and state energy policy disasters.
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The promised spending of $2.4 billion is to save 1,000 jobs involved. Moreover, the assistance is conditional on ensuring much of the money is allocated to replacing coal and gas fuels by intrinsically high-cost and unreliable wind and solar – and prospectively by hydrogen from water, a solution rightly ridiculed when Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen promoted it in the 1980s. ..... Read here .....pdf
USAID – AUSAID: Same playbook different actors
19 February 2025​​
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Donald Trump tweeted “Looks like billions of dollars have been stolen at USAID and other agencies much of it going to the fake news media as a payoff for creating good stories about the Democrats”. Revelations about corruption in the USAID beg questions about the integrity of Australia’s aid programs.
There are long-standing questions dating back to the Clinton days and before the Rudd ALP Government. ..... Read here
Econocide: green subsidies are hastening our energy demise
The Spectator, 17 February 2025​​
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In addition to bringing reduced emissions of supposed planetary warming CO2, government plans for wind and solar to dominate electricity supply assumed these technologies would become cheaper than the coal and gas they were to replace. Wind and solar were to be nurtured by government support, transforming them from ‘infant’ industries into mature supplies. But the level of subsidy, far from falling, has increased as they matured.
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Moreover, the shadow price for CO2 that the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) regards as necessary to achieve the government’s Net Zero ambitions rises over the years to 2050 to $420 per tonne. This equates to a tax of about $200 per MWh for gas .... Read online .....pdf
Trade wars: risks and opportunities for Australia
The Spectator, 6 February 2025​​
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President Trump’s weaponising of trade may simply be applying pressure to correct what he sees as unequal access for goods and to staunch the inflow of unwanted drugs and immigrants. But he often also talks about the benefits to the US of forcing imports to be replaced by domestic products. Notwithstanding a massive literature to the contrary, he also appears to believe that the foreigner, not the US consumer, ends up paying the import tax.
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Trump places special attention to nations running a trade surplus with the US. This does not include Australia, which imports about twice as much from the US as it exports.​ .... Read online .....pdf
Abandon net zero, rescue the economy
The Spectator, 30 January 2025​​
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'To rescue our economy,’ Trump signed day-one orders ‘to end all Biden restrictions on energy production, terminate his insane electric vehicle mandate, cancel his natural gas export ban, reopen ANWR in Alaska (the biggest site potentially anywhere in the world), and declare a national energy emergency.’
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Trump terminated Biden’s Green New Deal, pulled out of the Paris Accord, and castigated the Davos elitists who could do nothing more than acquiesce in his triumphant procession. Among the measures is a freeze on $280 billion for green energy ($50 billion was already committed) said to have ‘a very negative effect’. .
From Nero to LA’s Firetruck Lesbians
Quadrant Online,16 January 2025​​
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When Rome burned in 64AD, claiming 10,000 houses, the Emperor Nero was blamed but diverted criticism onto Christians. A similar search is now on for those to be blamed for California’s catastrophe despite the causes — from negligence and incompetence to DEI hiring policies — being as obvious as a hillside inferno.
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Since the cataclysm in Los Angeles started on January 7, every political body in the world responsible for fire-prone areas will be summoning reports from their specialist wildfire units and academic consultants.
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Fires come and go, and serious ones invariably bring inquiries in their wake. In Australia, the outcomes normally chastise the ..... Read online
Is Peter Dutton listening to Trump?
The Spectator, 8 January 2025​
Government efficiency is an election-winning issue for those with courage
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President Trump is creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to eliminate harmful and useless layers of bureaucracy. This may be an even more radical assault on costly government impositions than that of Argentinian President Milei, who in his first year of office consolidated 18 government ministries into nine and fired 50,000 government workers. Inflation is close to being tamed and a strong economic recovery is underway.
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Australia has a dismal record in such measures. Who can forget how Kevin Rudd said he would take a ‘meat-axe’ to the ..... Read online ..... pdf
Trump’s energy policies are a game changer for renewables
The Spectator, 4 January 2025​
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2024 ended with the now-customary government energy reviews and reports. The Senate Select Committee on Energy Planning and Regulation in Australia reported on the National Electricity Market (NEM) comprising the eastern states and South Australia. The report reflected the kaleidoscope of the Parliament’s views on energy.
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The recommendations of the Chairman, Senator Van, (a Liberal turned independent) included having the Productivity Commission (PC) conduct a review of the energy network. Other recommendations sought to reduce the costs of the battery storage necessary to complement the increase in dispersed wind and grid-scale solar. Six of the 22 recommendations call for measures to promote ‘Community Energy Re..... Read online ..... pdf
Nuclear cannot match coal as a competitive electricity supply
The Spectator, 17 December 2024​
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The debate between the Coalition and the Labor Party has long had an ethereal dimension. They are in furious contention, though both are promoting a wind/solar future. Labor says it wants to see wind, solar, hydro, and batteries supplying all but 2 per cent of the market, while the Coalition – as per Frontier Economics – says it wants to see a similar profile but with nuclear providing 29 per cent of supply.
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After Tony Abbott’s Prime Ministership, the Coalition adopted a Labor-lite electricity policy. Like Labor, it has paid obeisance to the Western world’s prime energy goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, though at a reduced pace to that of Labor. It is unclear whether the Coalition actually accepts the ALP view that wind and solar, ..... Read online ..... pdf
Even climate fanatics are having doubts
The Spectator, 13 December 2024​
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Time for another review of the electricity market…? Commonwealth and state ministers have established a new four-person commission, the NEM Wholesale Market Settings Review Panel, to advise on how better to administer an electricity market that endless subsidies and regulatory meddling has transformed from a world beater to among the developed world’s highest cost and unreliable supply.
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Creating a new review panel means politicians think there are insufficient resources in the thousands of people employed at taxpayer or electricity consumer expense in the burgeoning market-oversight agencies, including the three main market regulators, the CSIRO and the Commonwealth and state departments. All of these advise ..... Read online ..... pdf
The Department of Inefficiency and Public Waste
The Spectator, 5 December 2024​
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It is difficult to overstate the economic disaster that the National Accounts data is progressively revealing. The headline figures show income per capita levels that have been diminishing for each of the past seven quarters.
Tragically the Treasurer appears to be unaware of the cause of this – and that is also likely to be the case with his departmental advisers, who have been nurtured on Keynesian economics where every dollar spent by the government is counted as an additional dollar of domestic income. In fact, it is high levels of investment that is the basis for the wealth that brings income. ..... Read online ..... pdf
A very very very bad government
The Spectator, 28 November 2024​
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According to Anthony Albanese, ‘We came to office of course in 2022 with a number of challenges.’ His problem is that his shocking mismanagement has brought just about the worst economic outcome in the developed world.
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The most comprehensive measure of Australia’s abysmal performance is real GDP per capita. With the installation of the Albanese government in May 2022, Australia’s post-Covid recovery went into reverse. GDP per capita in the second quarter of 2024 remained below that of the first quarter of 2022. During that period, the US grew 5 per cent and the OECD as a whole was up over 2 per cent. ..... Read online ..... pdf
Australia’s energy policy is all coming badly unstuck
The Spectator, 21 November 2024​
To cap all Labor’s woes, the Starmer and Biden governments have announced a major u-turn to nuclear as their strategy to reducing emissions. Both the UK and US have recognised the impossibility of achieving Net Zero with the intermittent wind and solar strategy that has been their focus. They have asked Australia to join them in this approach but Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has rejected the invitation, claiming that Australia will stay on track, thereby becoming the sole remaining aspirant ‘renewable energy superpower’.
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Mr Bowen claimed that Australia should not follow such a route because we have better solar assets than the UK. Perhaps so, but ours
Trump a portent for Australian politics
The Spectator, 16 November 2024​
Trump might have only won 51 to 49 per cent of the popular vote, but the victory is assessed by friend and foe alike as so sweeping that it is already having global effects in causing even his political adversaries to modify their own policy stances.
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If it wasn’t apparent prior to the election, it is clear now that Trump wants to go beyond staunching the flow of Wokeism that has been, almost without remission, implanting itself within Western economies since the 1970s.
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His picks for high office demonstrate a radical determination to overturn the political status quo within Defence, Energy and Climate Change, Education, Health, Immigration, Tax, and ..... Read online ..... pdf
The World has changed
The Spectator, 7 November 2024​
(Outgoing) Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says, net zero is necessary to combat the “existential threat” of climate change at a cost to the US of $3 trillion per year by 2050. The policies, as passed, are to cost almost a trillion dollars
Trump’s view is, "the thing that's an existential threat is not global warming where the ocean will rise, maybe 1/8 of an inch in the next 497 years." He labelled the Biden policies to fight climate change as a "green new scam". And JD Vance stated, “Electricity already costs 30% more than it did when Ms. Harris took office, with projections of another 30% increase … next year. Gasoline prices are up 42%.
Astonishing cost, miserable return
The Spectator, 27 October 2024
It will take a long time to undo the damage done to our energy grid
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The Australian Energy Market Operator’s head, Daniel Westerman, attracted the media’s attention by refusing, under Parliamentary scrutiny, to guarantee that the Integrated System Plan (ISP) developed by his agency on behalf of the government will bring lower prices.
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Indeed, another of the plethora of regulatory agencies that are grinding the economy to a halt, the Australian Energy Regulator sets out the shadow price of CO2 incorporated into the electricity supply costs at $70 per tonne of CO2 in 2024, rising to $105 per tonne in 2030 and $420 per tonne in 2050.
Can subsidies help Australians make more babies?
The Spectator, 23 October 2024
Previous fears of overpopulation in nations with high population densities have been replaced by concerns about a declining and ageing population.
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The news that Victoria has Australia’s lowest fertility rate at 1.39 births per woman means that, excluding migration, its population will decline by one-third in a generation. Taiwan, with one of the world’s lowest birth rates at 1.09 per woman, faces a halving of its population in a generation. This perhaps poses an even greater threat to its future than mainland China.
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For the world as a whole, fertility has halved since 1960 to a level equivalent to the 2.1 rate per woman ..... Read online ..... pdf
Vic Libs: four years of power in 24 since Kennett lost
The Spectator, 14 October 2024
Recent polls show that the Liberals are more popular in Victoria (or less unpopular) than Labor for the first time since 2017.
Recalling a previous buoyant trend in 2017 being reversed with a change in leadership, some insiders are suggesting that the beleaguered John Pesutto be kept in place.
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That is surely untenable. Pesutto has decided to pursue what feels like a vendetta against Moira Deeming centring on the absurd fiasco at the Let Women Speak rally. The cack-handed approach of the leadership group has made Pesutto a joke. It is a rejection of support for one of a new breed of active MPs which is married to a generally timid approach to policy. ..... Read online ..... pdf
Monopolies in the labour market
The Spectator, 6 October 2024
See Saw Margery Daw,
Jacky shall have a new master;
Jacky shall earn but a penny a day,
Because he can’t work any faster
The first reference to this rhyme is 1640. It describes an iron law that payment must be related to productivity. This is inevitably so for the economy as a whole, and is even conceded by many of the politicians and IR experts who foster legal machinery to boost workers’ earnings above those that would emerge in a competitive market.
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The case rests on ‘market failure’.
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The term is bandied about regularly by those who .... Read online ..... pdf
Restoring Australia’s competitiveness
Canberra Daily, 4 October 2024
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Although a familiar name to Canberra political insiders, Van Jones is generally not well known in Australia. He was the green jobs czar in the Obama administration and has made the easy transition to being a CNN host, where he campaigns for Kamala Harris. During a discussion on green energy, he made a remarkable admission, saying, “Early on in my career, we thought we were going to be able to get all the way to our clean energy goals with no fossil fuels. It turned out that wasn’t true.”
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Contrary to the view expressed by Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen, Van Jones is now toning down the renewable goals that have featured so prominently in the US with subsidies under Build Back Better, as is the case with our own Future Made in Australia. ..... Read online ..... pdf
West and East divide along the economic green line
The Spectator, 21 September 2024
Dismantling reliable power is crippling Australia
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Stung by criticism from the business community, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suggested that he and they sought to address common concerns: housing, cost of living, the care economy, Net Zero, and skills. As a generalisation, Albanese has a point aside from Net Zero, which is finally losing its allure for a business community now less besotted with the possibilities of cheap renewables. But for the rest, the Albanese plan is nothing but statements.
Indeed, rather than recognising a need to reduce consumption to make room for capital expenditure to propel productivity..... Read online ..... pdf
The rise of social regulations
The Spectator, 9 September 2024
T he great surge in Australian productivity took place in two decades to the early years of the present century. It resulted from the deregulations initiated by Treasurer Paul Keating that were maintained and built upon by the Coalition (from 1996) which had, embarrassingly, been outflanked on the free enterprise right by the socialistic Labor Party. Something similar happened in New Zealand and to a degree in the United States during the same period.
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However, the Keating-Howard deregulation focused almost entirely upon “economic” regulation - measures which set prices and access to markets. Thus, for example, Australia had industries like electricity, which were exclusively government provided; it had airline. ..... Read online ..... pdf
The Albanese government has become a parody of itself
The Spectator, 3 September 2024
R eprising Kevin Rudd’s Monthly essay 14 years earlier, at the beginning of 2023, Treasurer Jim Chalmers outlined a new economic template that breaks away from the fusty models of the past. He talked of a ‘wasted decade’ of poor performance under Coalition rule, which he would turn around by replacing ‘neoliberalism’ with, ‘reimagining and redesigning markets – seeking value and impact, strengthening safeguards and guardrails in areas of unchecked risk’. Along with coordination and co-investment. He named the ‘clean energy sector’ as the perfect example of how this should work.
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Imagine his disappointment when, having put in place his radical new approach, he was confronted with Australia’s ..... Read online ..... pdf
Albanese’s inevitable slide into a Whitlamesque economy
The Spectator, 24 August 2024
A common mindset held by too many on the left is that production is inevitable, and will be maintained irrespective of the taxes levied and regulations imposed upon productive processes.
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For many, the issue for activist politicians is simply how do we divide people’s incomes between the part they are permitted to retain, the part for promoting the political class’s preferred ideologies, and the part for the all-important task of maintaining themselves in power.
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This may explain why the first and immediate act of the Albanese government was to grant favours to Labor’s key paymasters, the union movement, including putting in place ..... Read online ..... pdf
Are Superannuation funds serving our best interests?
Canberra Weekly, 15 August 2024
Since the requirements for all employees to participate in superannuation schemes, these savings have come to dominate the nation’s wealth holdings. The total funds now amount to $4 trillion, which is one third greater than the total value of shares traded on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Superannuation funds fall within three categories. Industry Funds (the biggest being Australian Super) are controlled by trade unions and manage about one third of funds. Originally founded to cover particular sectors, all these funds are now open to anyone. Public sector funds account for about 20 per cent of holdings with Queensland’s Australian Retirement Trust being the largest - ..... Read here
Kamala, the ‘Yas, queen!’ of energy subsidies
The Spectator, 14 August 2024
In the US, the Clean Investment Monitor has estimated the effects in investment of the Biden government’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is the primary Federal subsidy legislation for renewable energy. It reckons the IRA has brought ‘clean energy’ investment, including Electric Vehicles, to comprise 5.5 per cent of total private investment. US ‘clean energy’ subsidies, estimated at $US78 billion a year, are assessed to bring about 5-6 times this in terms of new investment.
In Australia, with subsidised ‘clean energy’ now comprising almost one-third of electricity supply (twice the US share), these subsidies loom even larger. .... Read online .....pdf
Australia’s Energy Future
The Light, Issue 13, August 2024
Andrew Forrest, a climate alarmist who controls the giant Fortescue group, has finally been forced to bow to commercial reality and abandon hydrogen as a future source of energy. Fortescue has reportedly lost $2 billion in pursuing this will-o’-the-wisp.
Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, under the spell of Chris Bowen, his Climate Change and Energy Minister, continues to pursue the illusion that hydrogen can provide cheap, safe and reliable energy. In an attempt to remodel the nation’s energy supply system, the government is requiring taxpayers and energy consumers to spend some $16 billion a year on renewables and hydrogen. But reality will surely soon prevail in the hydrogen myth – just as it did forty years ago ..... Read more .....pdf
Bleeding Australia dry
The Spectator, 4 August 2024
Nations achieve high standards of living by having a productive workforce and high levels of investment. Either they produce the goods and services most in demand or import them. The latter route requires a corresponding level of exports.
The world’s most traded goods are oil, gas, and petrol; motor vehicles and parts; computers and other IT; pharmaceuticals; aircraft; and medical equipment.
Uniquely among ‘first world’ nations, with the exception of gas, Australia has a major presence in none of these ......Read online .....pdf
Trump will change the (energy) world
The Spectator, 23 July 2024
The film VICE traces the rise of Dick Cheney to the position of US Vice President under the administration of the second George Bush (2001-09). Cheney, uniquely for Vice Presidents, negotiated virtual control over US foreign policy.
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His career started as a Congressional intern in 1973 during the Nixon administration at a time when interns were assigned to Democrats or Republicans rather than deciding for themselves. But, having attended an initiation in which Donald Rumsfeld (later Secretary of Defense) gave a rumbustious but apolitical address, Cheney was pleased to be placed with the Republicans, indeed, to the staff of Rumsfeld .....Read online .....pdf
Yet another government plan to destroy the economy
The Spectator, 15 July 2024
The Commonwealth Treasury is developing a ‘taxonomy to support the flow of capital into sustainable opportunities and the achievement of Australia’s climate, environmental, and social objectives’.
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Initially offering voluntary guidelines for investors, this is foreshadowed to become mandatory in future. It would then become a central plan apparatus to vet capital expenditure proposals to ensure that they are consistent with the government’s goals. That is a breathtaking departure from the current market system based on individuals and businesses deciding how they should spend their own funds.
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The taxonomy’s focus, as with so much of .....Read online .....pdf
Superannuation funds and green energy
The Spectator, 6 July 2024
A new One Nation cartoon speculates that when it comes to superannuation funds which are union-controlled, ALP donors support renewable energy and oppose coal, gas, and nuclear because they have huge holdings of the firms receiving the subsidies to renewable energy. But it is not only ALP-aligned super funds adopting this stance.
... see cartoon on X here
The subsidies to renewables are not sufficient to prevent costs being incurred by investors in ‘Environment Social Governance’ (ESG) funds – actually now a virtual pseudonym for those investing in businesses pursuing ‘CO2 Net Zero’. .....Read online .....pdf
Nature vs. nuclear: the economics of renewable energy
Canberra Daily, 4 July 2024
Predictably, ACT Independent Senator David Pocock attacked the Coalition’s policy to build nuclear power generators. But in what may be a first, he did so on grounds of cost, a matter about which the decarbonising Senator had never shown the least curiosity with regard to the renewables program.
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His previous objections were to policies that:
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did not sufficiently deprive Australians of cheaper cars, (Big Brother-like, he regards people as too stupid to decide for themselves between a higher initial price and lower fuel costs);
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imposed insufficient environmental costs on .....Read online .....pdf
The nuclear gamble
The Spectator, 21 June 2024
Finally, the Opposition has announced it is going to develop a nuclear power future for Australia. The government, along with the renewables subsidy-fuelled lobby, issued howls of derision. Too expensive. The community won’t accept it. Drawing from no less an authority than a Simpsons cartoon, Energy Minister Bowen declared nuclear energy will cause mutations including three-eyed fish.
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Predictably the move was panned by renewable energy investor Malcolm Turnbull, who burnished his own energy credentials in creating Snowy 2 as a $2 billion solution to the intermittency problem of wind and solar that would be up and running by 2022. Snowy 2 will cost over $20 billion, not be ready by 2030 and will only provide a minor .....Read online .....pdf
Recognising ignorance
The Spectator, 19 June 2024
In March this year, Treasurer Jim Chalmers asked the Productivity Commission (PC) to assess competition-enhancing reform options to reinvigorate the stalled process of productivity gains. He did so against a decade-long background of flagging productivity gains and actual falls since 2022.
Illustrating his ignorance about why such alarming trends were taking place, the Treasurer asked the PC to recommend solutions in the context of ‘adapting to the Net Zero transition’ (code for forcing the displacement of low-cost coal with high-cost wind and solar) and the ‘expansion of the care and support economy’. These – together with regulatory amplifications covering housing, mining, and .....Read online .....pdf
Government regulations are responsible for unaffordable housing
The Spectator, 11 June 2024
The Australian house building (though not apartment building) industry is mainly non-unionised and therefore has low costs. But building a new house or apartment faces hundreds of different regulatory requirements. For houses, (which comprise over two-thirds of new dwellings) the most important of these is government regulation of land for building – especially on the periphery of cities.
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The latest Demographia Index places the cost of buying the median house in Australia at 8.2 times the median income (up from 6.2 in 2004). For Sydney and Melbourne, buying the median home requires 13.3 and 9.9 times the median income respectively. Perth at 5.4 times the median income has the cheapest prices in Australia. .....Read online .....pdf
Renewable energy subsidies undermine our economy
The Spectator, 6 June 2024
Australia has seen a 20-year downward trend in productivity. Many other nations have seen similar trends and the cause is common: burgeoning growth of government squeezing out productive investment and an unrelenting surge in regulations, especially and notably so in Australia, covering fossil fuel both in its extraction and in its domestic use.
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The Productivity Commission depicts the generally downward trend in productivity since the mid-1990s, punctuated by a mini recovery that petered out about a decade ago. In 2022-23 productivity actually fell by 3.7 per cent and remains below its 2021-22 level. .....Read online .....pdf
Energy issues in the Commonwealth budget
Canberra Daily, 29 May 2024
Energy and climate issues were front and central in the latest Commonwealth budget.
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The government announced that taxpayers will plough $22.7 billion into Labor’s ‘Future Made in Australia’ agenda. That funding is also intended to help “unlock greater private investment”, which detractors say in reality invites an even greater wasteful use of funds. The policy focus is on eliminating coal and other fossil fuels by fostering five priority areas: green hydrogen, critical minerals, green metals, low carbon liquid fuels, and clean energy manufacturing.
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In the past, we have seen governments seeking to build local industries which have proven successful overseas – largely by using .....Read online .....pdf
Budget review: net zero cannibalises our prosperity
The Spectator, 16 May 2024
The public is receiving the Budget with a sense of bored irrelevance. People are pleased to see a $300 cut in their electricity bills, hoping that someone else is financing this, but eyes glaze over at the billions of dollars of taxpayer money with which the government promises to catapult the economy into the nirvana that is the green energy transition. And nobody seems concerned that spending is at its highest since the Hawke-Keating years of the early 1990s.
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But the reality is this budget not only amplifies the already excessive government spending levels, but adds measures that aim to transform the economy by injecting unprecedented government .....Read online .....pdf
Victoria’s Budget reveals a state strangled by Labor
The Spectator, 10 May 2024
Forty years ago, John Cain’s Victorian government commenced an era of extravagant expenditure turbocharged by the Victorian Economic Development Corporation (a forerunner of the Albanese government’s Future Made in Australia fund) and government deficits. As the chickens of this were coming home to roost in 1990, after eight years as Premier, he was replaced by Joan Kirner, a politician from the far left.
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The nine-year reign of Dan Andrews saw a comparable massive expenditure increase including extravagant public service spending and was propelled by his Big Build infrastructure program. Andrews was last year replaced by Jacinta Allen, like Joan Kirner, from the socialist left.
The modern obsession with ‘green’ investment
The Spectator, 1 May 2024
The recently deceased Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway was arguably the most successful investor ever. He was noted for his pithy statements, one of which was, ‘Invest in a business any fool can run, because someday a fool will.’ Under his and Warren Buffett’s management, the fund adopts the standard portfolio investment theory of investing in all sectors but targeting firms with great management systems. The sectors in which Berkshire Hathaway invests include food, technology, retail, home building, motor vehicles (only EVs), traders, telecoms, and energy (both oil/gas and renewables). Warren Buffett said about the latter, ‘We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms … that’s the only reason to build them.’
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Many other investment funds do not follow this .....Read online .....pdf
Debate over Albanese’s public sector investment in clean energy
Canberra Daily, 26 April 2024
Mr Albanese’s government has announced a new plan to have the public sector as ‘a participant, a partner, an investor and enabler’ in selecting areas for support, with the focus on ‘clean energy’ and new industries.
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There is so much wrong with this.
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In particular, the investment in clean energy is already destroying the low-cost electricity and gas that have underpinned our industry and agriculture. And it is doing so with subsidies extracted from consumers and taxpayers that amount to $15.5 billion a year. .....Read online .....pdf
Broken Promises - Broken Budget
The Spectator, 22 April 2024
In December 2021, Anthony Albanese announced his ‘plan’ to reduce electricity prices by $275 per household by 2025. He said he was certain of such a price reduction, ‘because we have done the modelling’. According to Selectra, the average bill was $145 higher in March 2024 than in November 2021.
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Government measures are targeted at the ‘energy transition’ to Net Zero emissions of carbon dioxide by replacing coal and gas with wind and solar. As a result of this support, renewable energy is forcing low-cost coal capacity out of the market. But rather than producing benefits from what politicians tell us is the lowest cost form of electricity, the wholesale electricity price has risen to over $100 per MWh ..... Read online .....pdf
Albanese’s Net Zero protectionism
The Spectator, 15 April 2024
Australian governments are forcing a “transition” in electricity supply from coal (and gas) to wind and solar. Though the ACT has virtually no electricity generation other than that from rooftops, it leads the way in terms of its purchasing contracts for grid-sourced renewables.
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Wind and solar have different operating characteristics than coal and gas electricity generators. Coal and gas (and nuclear) can operate pretty much continuously but weather and nightfall limits solar to generating only 20 per cent of the time and wind to about 30 per cent. And electricity supply from wind and solar generators is highly variable.
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With wind/solar at their present market share of ..... Read online .....pdf
We have a problem with democracy
The Spectator, 4 April 2024
The UK Reform Party, whose President is Nigel Farage, is campaigning for a referendum on ‘Net Zero’. However, YouGov polling has 71 per cent of all voters (63 per cent of Conservatives) supporting the overall Net Zero target. The majority vote is conditioned by agitprop claiming catastrophic global warming is occurring due to the burning of fossil fuels, that a consensus of nations is taking action to prevent this, and that the cost of doing so is trivial.
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None of this is true.
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Although mediocre scientists are on the global warming cart, the giants – think Richard Lindzen, Willie Soon, Will Happer, Ole ..... Read online .....pdf
Australia’s government-induced transition to a high-cost, unreliable electricity supply
Canberra Daily, 2 April 2024
Australian governments are forcing a “transition” in electricity supply from coal (and gas) to wind and solar. Though the ACT has virtually no electricity generation other than that from rooftops, it leads the way in terms of its purchasing contracts for grid-sourced renewables.
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Wind and solar have different operating characteristics than coal and gas electricity generators. Coal and gas (and nuclear) can operate pretty much continuously but weather and nightfall limits solar to generating only 20 per cent of the time and wind to about 30 per cent. And electricity supply from wind and solar generators is highly variable.
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With wind/solar at their present market share of ..... Read online .....pdf
Fatal flaws exposed in the Net Zero transition. What is to be done?
The Spectator, 26 March 2024
According to NSW’s Ausgrid, the most recent AEMO draft Integrated System Plan (ISP) for electricity supply will require $325 billion for transmission to meet Net Zero emissions by 2050.
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Aside from blowing the lid on this element of Net Zero’s cost, the call for submissions on the draft ISP allowed a sliver of realism to be voiced.
Electricity suppliers, including the major generation businesses, (who are also beneficiaries of renewable energy subsidies), warned the government and its appointed advisers that their time-frame for closing down coal and most gas generators is impossible. ..... Read online .....pdf
Costs of subsidies for renewable energy and associated need for energy storage - Read here
March 2024
The grim cost of firming up solar and wind
The Spectator, 20 March 2024
The ‘transition’ of the electricity supply industry has been forced by government subsidies to renewable energy generators with increased impositions on coal and gas with higher royalty charges and bans playing a secondary role. The first subsidies were introduced by John Howard in 2001 as the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. He later described this as his worst political decision. It required electricity retailers gradually to include wind or solar to comprise 2 per cent of their additional energy. This was quantified as 9,500 megawatt hours.
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These measures pandered to concerns about the global warming. They also responded to lobbyists, who wheeled out experts claiming that renewable energy technology would follow a variation of Moore’s Law,
Energy Policy and How to Fix it
Quadrant Online, 15 March 2024
Many people have personal concerns about the pursuit of green energy by governments, federally and state. The visual intrusion, the land-hungry windfarms and solar panels and the extensive enlargement of the transmission network required to accommodate them have a marked effect on individuals’ environments and livelihoods. But the more fundamental issue is the destruction of our economy and living standards from the policies being ruthlessly pursued by both Labor and – sad to say – Coalition parties and governments.
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In pursuit of the myth that emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is bringing about a change in the global climate, throughout the Western world governments are spending inordinate ..... Read online .....pdf
Retrieving Australia’s energy policy disaster
The Spectator, 29 February 2024
Australian governments are in denial but it’s clear that the great green revolution they planned for energy supply has failed abysmally. Supply has become precarious and electricity prices to households and commercial users alike are skyrocketing. This is threatening the ongoing viability of industries like nickel and aluminium smelting where energy accounts for a third of the costs.
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Rather than abandoning the folly of an energy policy dictated by ideology and bereft of industry knowledge, governments are responding with ever more market interventions. These attempts to remedy the adverse effects of the interventions already in place will aggravate the economic injuries.
Federal and state government measures impose a ..... Read online .....pdf
The solution to our government-induced malaise
The Spectator, 19 February 2024
Studying last month’s Davos meeting of the world’s (largely self-appointed) elites, Walter Russell Mead sees an inflection point.
He says that when they listened to Argentinian President Milei promoting free market capitalism, the Davosies’ applause was more than polite clapping. There was a sense that all was not well in the supposed government-planned China, and a recognition that the more hands-on EU governmental approach has resulted in Europe slipping behind the US with its lighter government touch over the economy. This was coupled with a concern that the farmer revolts around Europe reflected a sudden rejection of trust in the establishment. Above all, Ukraine has made the Euro grandees ‘uncomfortably aware of how dependent the ..... Read online .....pdf
The stumbling journey of EVs
Canberra Daily, 17 February 2024
The forecast triumph of electric vehicles (EVs) is facing headwinds.
In the US last year, Ford lost $US64,731 for each EV it sold – almost as much as the selling price for the top-of-the-line Mustang Mach-E. GM is also facing difficulties and, like Ford, has re-jigged its production plans back towards the internal combustion engine. Also, mounting losses have forced Hertz to radically reduce its EV fleet.
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And in Europe, reduced subsidies for EVs brought a 16 per cent sales fall in Germany last year with a further 9 per cent decline expected this year. In France, Renault was forced to abort plans to float its EV division on the stock exchange. Electric commercial vehicle makers have fared even worse. Several, including Volvo’s subsidiary and the UK’s ..... Read online .....pdf
Plucking the income goose
The Spectator, 8 February 2024
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s celebrated Finance Minister, is reported to have said, ‘The act of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to procure the largest quantity of feathers with the least possible amount of squealing.’ Populist politics suggests that policies which allow high earners to keep more of their earnings are always electorally risky, even though high tax rates on high income earners discourages enterprise, bringing long-term adverse effects on wealth creation.
So, the Labor government has abandoned the Stage 3 tax cuts, which it supported six years ago whilst in Opposition. This was to have removed some of the bracket creep caused by inflation which pushes taxpayers into higher income tax bands. The proposals would ..... Read online .....pdf
Will this be the summer of Daniel?
The Spectator, 31 January 2024
'Wholesale electricity prices on the East Coast have halved from 2022 levels, reflecting the increasing role that low-cost renewables are playing in daily generation,’ announced an excited AEMO press release, citing comments from chief Daniel Westerman.
But hold the front page!
Just to confirm that ‘one swallow a summer does not make’, the average 2023 price was around $120. That’s three times its level in 2015, which is the year before it became evident that the subsidies to renewables – now costing over $10 billion a year – had destroyed Australia’s low-cost coal-based electricity supply. ..... Read online .....pdf
Will 2024 mark a turning point?
Canberra Daily, 20 & 23 January 2024
The ACT projects itself as a pioneer in the global movement towards “Net Zero” emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases”.
The Territory has contracted for 100 per cent wind/solar electricity (though as an integral part of the NSW region its actual supply is 70 per cent coal derived). It has been a pioneer in subsidising electric vehicles and is a “first mover” in banning direct use of natural gas; those measures that are claimed to bring lower emissions by replacing coal, oil and gas with wind and solar.
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The Territory’s position appears to be consistent with the communiqué issued in Dubai at the 28th annual Conference of the Parties (COP 28) of the UN Climate Change Convention. The COP 28 ..... Read online .....pdf
Renewables: an expensive nightmare to nowhere
The Spectator, 16 January 2024
Plans for the elimination of coal require increasing regulatory measures and ever-escalating levels of government spending.
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Federally, the ALP has built upon the measures introduced by the Turnbull and Morrison governments with increased funding for ‘Clean Energy’ projects, the Safeguard Mechanism (requiring the biggest 215 electricity users to reduce their emissions by 30 per cent by 2030), and the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) which provides subsidies to developments that add ‘firming’ capacity to improve the reliability of the weather and daylight reliant wind and solar.
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Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, won’t say how much the CIS contracts are costing. He says that’s because ..... Read online .....pdf
20 years since John Howard’s renewable energy policy
The Spectator, 5 January 2024
It is now just over 20 years since John Howard introduced a renewable energy policy which required wind/solar-generated electricity to be incorporated within energy retailers’ total supply. This gave those sources of energy a de facto subsidy. That basic subsidy presently is $50 per megawatt hour for large-scale solar and wind – rather more than the total price of generated energy formerly experienced – and $40 per megawatt hour for rooftop solar.
John Howard recognised the error he had made and that subsidised energy would, if allowed to expand, undermine the electricity supply’s economics. He refused to increase the capped amount of subsidised wind and solar from its initial 9,500 gigawatt hours (nominally 2 ..... Read online .....pdf
The energy Grinch
The Spectator, 27 December 2023
Just before Christmas, the CSIRO presented the government with an analysis in support of their beliefs that wind and solar are the cheapest electricity supply sources. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) also issued its latest Integrated Systems Plan (ISP), carrying a similar but more nuanced message.
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Overlooking evidence that the higher the share of renewables the higher the electricity price, CSIRO’s analysis (GenCost 2023-24) also rejected concerns that the intermittent nature of renewables would translate to impossibly high costs.
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Implicitly, the report endorsed the COP28 climate forum’s communique
Australian farms among most productive in the world
Canberra Daily, 21 December 2023
Aside from farmers’ skills, a nation’s agricultural potential is dependent on three key variables: good rainfall, plentiful sunshine and secure rights over the land that is being used for farming purposes.
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While Australia has plenty of sunshine, it is the driest continent by a considerable distance. However, reasonably secure property rights and a have-a-go attitude have brought Australian farms to be among the most productive in the world. Australian farmers produce about twice as much agricultural output as the population consumes.
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“Riding on the sheep’s back” is a hackneyed but not inaccurate description of the Australian success story at least until the past 50 years when mining rose to prominence.
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An indispensable part of the success of agriculture has been irrigation. This has severely reduced ..... Read online .....pdf
From West to East: shifting global power via Net Zero
The Spectator, 21 December 2023
The 28th annual scourging of fossil fuel users, the Conference of Parties (COP28), has been and gone. Like the previous 27 meetings, it has issued a lofty statement of intent but unlike other recent meetings there was no Greta Thunberg. Her absence appeared to relate to limited protest options in the oil potentate United Arab Emirates.
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Some observers regard the final COP agreement as a radical intensification of the fight against coal since it mentions phasing out the demonic fuel for the first time. Others argue this is an exaggeration since the conference advocates a phase-out only ‘in a just, orderly, and equitable manner’.
In fact, although the ‘commitments’ at the COP talkfests are voluntary,
ACT energy policy denies consumers choice
Canberra Daily, 13 December 2023
Green climate activists initially preferred gas over electricity for power supplies. They did so because, per unit of energy, the CO2 emission levels of gas are about half those of coal, which remains, albeit to a diminishing extent, the mainstay of electricity power generation. But each new regulatory victory in extending the subsidies for wind and solar to replace low-cost and more reliable coal in electricity generation has led activists to raise the ante. Some have dishonestly claimed lower gas use, as well as helping prevent a fictitious “global boiling”, will also reduce non-existent health risks from gas fumes.
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On 8 December, the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to ban gas connections to new housing developments. ..... Read online .....pdf
Capacity Investment Scheme hog-ties nation to energy woes
The Spectator, 9 December 2023
Market regulation is designed to modify the outputs of, and inputs to, goods and services. In doing so, they will not only cause higher costs and prices but also bring unanticipated distortions that require additional regulations that normally magnify cost increases.
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Nowhere is this more apparent than with regulations placed over the Australian electricity market and the expanded subsidies envisaged under the government’s recently announced Capacity Investment Scheme.
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Electricity is the building block for modern production and human comfort. It involves the cost of generation, the cost of transporting it through poles and wires, and the cost of administering that process.
The broken water politics of the Murray Darling Basin
The Spectator, 25 November 2023
Twenty-five years ago, initiating a pattern that is now commonplace, a group of radical environmentalists calling themselves scientists launched a campaign to re-allocate water, then being used in agricultural production, to the ‘environment’. The claim was that agriculture, and especially irrigation, was causing environmental stress through salinisation of the soil and erosion.
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As usual with such activist claims, the facts showed them to be totally baseless. There is no serious soil or water salinisation in Australia other than that which occurs naturally. Moreover, it is ludicrous to suggest that farming is causing soil stress when both farm productivity and farm output has increased steadily for two centuries. A Parliamentary Committee examined the matter and agreed with that conclusion. ..... Read online .....pdf
Labor cannot escape blame for economic woes
The Spectator, 17 November 2023
The Australian Financial Review’s Michael Read demonstrated how Australia experienced a sharp reduction in living standards during the third quarter of 2023, an outcome not seen within the OECD as a whole.
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Productivity is the key to income levels and it has been falling in Australia. Real output per hour worked, following a brief post-lockdown recovery (the red line below) on the latest data (the June quarter of 2023), was over 7 per cent below the average level at the March quarter of 2022. The widening gap between wages (the blue line below), which continues to grow, albeit sluggishly, and productivity is unsustainable. Inflation is inevitable with such a gap. ..... Read online .....pdf
The Paris crowd
The Spectator, 07 November 2023
Last month, the Paris-based OECD published its latest assessment of the Australian economy.
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Nobody read it other than those people paid to do so. And it did not, and could not, better inform anybody of desirable future directions because all it did was repeat the bromides and policies that Australian government departments – mainly the Treasury – served up. Those policies were eagerly accepted by the OECD report writers since they are cadres in the same group-think team.
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Predictably, the OECD assessment recognised a problem with the Australian government’s fiscal deficit. But, just as predictably, ..... Read online .....pdf
The Bowen delusion
The Spectator, 30 October 2023
Both the ALP and the Coalition, ostensibly as a means to reduce national emissions of CO2, espouse wind and solar supported by regulations and financial subsidies.
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As well as causing increased taxes, disadvantaging coal means higher energy prices across the board. Political leaders fail to explain this – often because they don’t understand why prices rise.
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Governments prefer consumers to refrain from asking where these price rises come from. After all, when it comes to energy, the government is acting in the interest of the consumer. Allegedly.
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John Howard’s original regulation, 20 years ago was to force electricity ..... Read online .....pdf
Chasing idiocy: how subsidies power our energy price hikes
The Spectator, 24 October 2023
If we looked at the picture for Australia in the mid-90s, the electricity industry was massively overstaffed and the gas industry was dissipating the wealth that Exxon had discovered in Bass Strait.
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In the case of electricity, Victoria led the way, and one simple figure illustrates the benefits brought about by privatisation and the introduction of competition. Generation Victoria was the monopoly supplier. Prior to reforms, which were ironically initiated by socialist Premier Joan Kirner, it employed 25,000 people; by the early 2000s, the numbers employed, including consultants and contractors, were under 3,000. At the same time the output, in terms of the power stations’ availabilities to run, had lifted from somewhere in the mid-70 per cent. ..... Read online .....pdf
Albanese’s heavy-handed government
The Spectator, 7 October 2023
The contrast between the ALP’s most successful government – the Hawke-Keating government – and that of Mr Albanese is easily recognisable. By and large, Hawke led a party that had transformed itself from the wreckage of the previous Whitlam government’s dalliance with extreme socialistic policies. Mr Albanese leads a government that is a reversion to the Whitlam policies cloaked in more modern green-imbued garb.
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The government led by Bob Hawke set about to differentiate itself, not only from the socialism of Whitlam, but from a Liberal/National Coalition that had not deviated from a path involving government increasingly constraining business operations. ..... Read online .....pdf
Labor in office: time to take stock
The Spectator, 28 September 2023
The Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Energy Minister were supposedly somewhat trained as economists, but all three fail to grasp the discipline’s basic principles.
Energy Minister Bowen claims that his renewables program will create 60,000 jobs by replacing ‘legacy’ coal plants with wind and solar facilities plus the increase in power lines and batteries that replacement will entail.
While increases in jobs (and/or income levels) may result from the services stemming from government spending, Mr Bowen’s numbers refer to the gross jobs involved in the construction activities ..... Read online .....pdf
Unexpected costs
The Spectator, 17 September 2023
Manipulated estimates of Levelised Cost of Energy tables showing wind and solar to be the cheapest supplies of energy are contradicted by the trends on actual electricity costs and inter-country comparisons.
The readily available data by country for the wind and solar renewables share and price of electricity show a high share of renewables is concomitant with high electricity costs. The cheapest electricity is found in the nations with the lowest renewable energy share: Saudi Arabia, Russia, India, UAE and Korea. Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy have high prices and high renewables shares. ..... Read online .....pdf
The RBA’s Cock and Bullock Climate Myth
Quadrant Online, 8 September 2023
In recent years, getting promoted to the most senior ranks of the bureaucracy has been conditional upon the candidate being either immersed in the ruling polity’s ideology or proving willing to subordinate “frank and fearless” advice to political pragmatism. Those climbing to the top in economic or environmental policy areas have had to assure their political masters they are on board with human-induced catastrophic climate change and that wind/solar (and the hydrogen fantasy) are the only antidotes.
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Michele Bullock showed this in titling her first speech as governor-designate as, “Climate change and central banks”. Her previous public statements made no mention of the issue. These included this before the Senate and this in June (when she had her hat in the ring), ..... Read online
Spinning the myth of Global Warming for corporate gain
The Spectator, 25 August 2023
Although in 2011, the Commonwealth Budget papers compiled all the measures that were being implemented to foster renewable energy, that assembly ceased, presumably, because it was recognised as being antipathetic to the notion that wind and solar were cheaper than the fossil fuels that they were destined to supplant.
The myth of human-induced global warming has always been a mixture of scientific chicanery and businesses, seeking to leverage a competitive advantage over their rivals.
For scientists – at least those in the public sector – global warming provided the opportunity to be listened to by politicians and the public, to attend international gatherings, and be shown the respect they felt was previously lacking. ..... Read online .....pdf
The onset of bankruptcy: from green to red
The Spectator, 13 August 2023
CSIRO'S GenCost analysis, which gives cover to Ministerial actions to replace coal and gas with wind and solar, has been revealed as a series of factoids that make wind and solar energy appear cheap because the infrastructure required to transport it, the storage required to firm it and its subsidies are all just assumed to be costlessly in place.
​here are also growing grassroots concerns about the collateral land use and environmental damage to rural and suburban communities from the wind and solar farms and their associated transmission lines.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has plans to increase regulatory imposts on energy and extend them to Industry, the Built Environment, Agriculture and Land, Transport, and Resources. ..... Read online .....pdf
Global Boiling: Net Zero hysteria catches fire while Greens meltdown
The Spectator, 3 August 2023
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has declared ‘the era of global boiling has arrived’. Australia’s Teals and Greens no doubt eagerly grasped at the ‘terrifying’ words.
Greens Senator Nick McKim went into a state of peak catastrophism when he said, ‘Shut your mouth! People are dying because of … sociopaths like you.’ It was a comment directed toward Matt Canavan. He was swiftly asked to withdraw the remarks. ‘I withdraw, and I’m not going to cop interjections from sociopaths like Senator Canavan. I will not cop it and I won’t…’
The invective attests to blind adherence to the ideology of human-induced climate change that is failing to occur and ..... Read online .....pdf
The $10 billion cabal of renewable subsidies killing coal
The Spectator, 24 July 2023
A t this time, the attack on fossil fuels, particularly coal, is at a crescendo. In North America with the dishonestly named Inflation Reduction Act and the European Union with its Green Deal, key government institutions are doubling their efforts to subsidise renewable energy and force the closure of coal.
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In Australia, we are seeing similar trends spearheaded by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, a man whose political conceit is only exceeded by his apparent incompetence in the role. Bowen was the man who, as Immigration Minister in the Gillard government, announced that stopping boats bringing illegal immigrants to Australia was impossible. He remained unchastened when the Abbott ..... Read online ..... pdf
Treasury’s Warmists Chill the Prospects for Growth
Quadrant Online, 18 July 2023
W e have seen big government and woke financiers working hand in glove over recent years to advance the cause of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG). Superannuation funds have been increasingly orientating their investments towards ESG. The governance part involves avoiding firms with boards and senior executives containing too many white males and, therefore, inadequate ‘diversity’. The environmental and social parts once meant avoiding firms in the defence and tobacco industries, but the pariahs in our modern woke world are avoiding hydrocarbons – coal, gas, and oil.
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When the Bank of England released its support package for firms facing difficulties due to the Ukraine war, it insisted that firms ..... Read online
Why Dutton needs coal not renewables or nuclear
The Spectator, 8 July 2023
Y esterday, Opposition leader Peter Dutton called for Australia to embrace nuclear power to secure a clean, cost-effective, consistent electricity supply.
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Dutton is right to be concerned that the government’s policy of replacing coal-fired plants with renewables will end in a disastrous shortage of power.
Dutton’s proposal is to replace coal-fired plants with small modular reactors that are on the drawing board in the US, UK, and elsewhere. By locating the new nuclear reactors in existing coal-fired plants, they can tap into existing transmission lines.
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There are a number of problems with this, but first ..... Read online ..... pdf
The failure of forced transition despite public lust for green energy
The Spectator, 1 July 2023
T hroughout history, interactions of supply and demand have driven ‘transitions’ – think horses to cars and trains; whale oil to paraffin; transistors, resistors, capacitors to microchips. Uniquely, the much-flaunted energy transition from coal, oil, and gas to wind and solar and perhaps to green hydrogen is politically propelled, resting on a supposed link of climate change from burning hydrocarbons.
In Australia, as in the US with its so-called Inflation Reduction Act and the EU with its European Green Plan, expelling hydrocarbons from the energy supply has become the central dimension of politics itself.
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Ostensibly, this is curious since environmental ..... Read online ..... pdf
Jumpin’ Jack Flash: gas joins the ‘lexicon of evil’
The Spectator, 26 June 2023
I n 1990, at the dawn of climate alarmism, it was welcomed as a bridge to the zero-carbon fantasy that was to avert a fruitless search for a ‘Planet B’ – billed as the only alternative to decarbonising. Per unit of energy, gas, after all, has only half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal.
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But a political Group-Think by all major Western leaders (post-Trump) favours net neutral emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases between 2030 and 2050. This has raised the ambition of the leading cadres and is impacting on politicians. New vistas for closing off the use of hydrocarbons are being probed. Gas has become no longer half-way acceptable. ..... Read online ..... pdf
World Bank woes
The Spectator, 19 June 2023
T he World Bank has a great cosmopolitan air to its name – not like one of those parochial institutions like the US Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank. This is the world organisation.
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However, the World Bank turns out to be just another Woke UN institution. Its original rationale was to provide long-term loans to foster infrastructure in third-world countries. Water, energy, and health were major disbursement areas.
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Nowadays any energy funding would exclude hydrocarbons. Indeed ‘sustainable development’ and ‘transition’ are key objectives – both are, of course, code for replacing fossil fuels with renewables. Nuclear is excised from the Bank’s vocabulary. ..... Read online ..... pdf
Slowing down environmental craziness
Spectator, 10 June 2023
P ressure to replace controllable and low-cost coal and gas with an intermittent and high-cost wind and solar alternative continues, but there are increasing signs of unease with this policy. Some of this may stem from a growing recognition of the implausibility of the government’s claims that the ‘transition’ to wind and solar will be both smooth and cost less when finished.
For many, a compromise that will give a secure electricity supply without carbon emissions is nuclear. This, though far more expensive than coal as a source of electricity, is safe and, being controllable, is cheaper than wind and solar.
The problems with nuclear include the long ..... Read online .....pdf
The Rise and Riches of the Rentrepreneurs
Quadrant Online, 5 June 2023
C WP Renewables Pty Ltd presents as a story of successful entrepreneurship for which its owners have been rewarded with fantastic profits. But that outcome has been accompanied by a huge cost to the community.
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The company, established in 2007, has been mainly involved in wind farm developments with giant Swiss holding company Partners Group, which also contributed a chunk of equity capital. Aside from some potential ‘blue sky‘ projects involving solar, wind and batteries, CWP’s main assets were five windfarms with 257 turbines erected between 2016 and 2020 at a cost of $1.72 billion. The turbines were financed by the Commonwealth’s CEFC green energy bank ($233 million), and Partners Group ..... Read online
Political and corporate defeatism
The Spectator, 26 May 2023
C harles Mackay’s 1841, titled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds has enduringly served to refute claims of collective wisdom. He described events like Dutch tulip mania and the 1711-22 South Sea Bubble as frenzies of collective investment hysteria.
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In the modern era, every decade or so we have seen more such investment delirium, including the build-up to the 1929 Wall Street crash with lesser events like the 1970s Poseidon mining boom/bust and the 2007 collapse of US leveraged housing funds.
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In all cases, investment frenzies ramped up share prices to stratospheric levels. Lessons have not been learned. The next debacle will centre on
Upshots from politicians delivering more free stuff and regulations
The Spectator, 24 May 2023
T he forerunner of democracy – a post-medieval one-man-one-vote – was propelled by radicals seeking greater freedom of trade, speech, and religion in the face of vested interests and intolerance.
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Building upon gains in these areas, radicals promoted greater equality – first of incomes (by compulsory takings from the better-off) and subsequently augmenting this with regulatory measures on economic activities. At a later stage, some special privileges were extended to previously disfavoured racial groups. In this latter respect, people, at least in Western nations, are probably more accepting of non-mainstream race, religious, and sexual preferences than in any previous era.
.... Read online ..... pdf
Recessions are bad news for super funds
The Spectator, 11 May 2023
T he Commonwealth budget surplus stems from the nation’s resource assets, and to a lesser degree its agricultural strengths. But, rather than fostering these advantages, Australian governments are focused on negating them.
For agriculture, this is seen in ever-mounting land-use restrictions and in the Commonwealth’s intent on stopping the live sheep and beef trade.
The resources industry faces even greater environmental-based curbs on new proposals.
The Commonwealth Environment Minister, Tanya .... Read online ..... pdf
Energy: drowning in subsidies
The Spectator, 6 May 2023
P aul Broad, the former head of Snowy Hydro, resigned amid, according to the Australian Financial Review, an escalation of tensions with Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Broad did not comment on his reasons for resigning. In a recent interview with 2GB, he said ‘it will take 80 years not 8’ to transition to renewables. He seems to claim we need this transition, but I do not believe we do. Most political leaders are deaf to such views, which swim against a tide of activist enmity and businesses searching for subsidies.
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You can’t. And the truth is, we need this transition. If it ever occurs, it will take 80 years, not eight. So there’s massive changes need to occur. And I’m deeply concerned about the rush. The notion that somehow .... Read online ..... pdf
Australian productivity growth lowest in 60 years
The Spectator, 25 April 2023
L ast month the Productivity Commission (PC) revealed that Australian productivity growth on the decade to 2020 was the lowest in 60 years. Mining and agriculture were the most efficient sectors, though productivity gains in some services – like medicine and digital services – may be hidden because of improved quality.
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To avoid antagonising the dominant political ideology, with masterly understatement, the PC opines, ‘…abatement efforts could, in many instances, increase the cost of production and could put downward pressure on measured productivity, at least in the short term.’ The PC makes stacks of recommendations for improvement, including some that could raise productivity by freeing up investment .... Read online ..... pdf
Two cheers for democracy!?
The Spectator, 19 April 2023
T wo cheers for democracy! So wrote E.M. Forster speaking for the Bloomsbury set, the affluent intellectuals who were the leading ‘Wokes’ of the 1930s. ‘Two cheers’ was a half-hearted acclamation of a political outcome that, at least in the England in which they lived, had neither delivered government shorn of Victorian traditionalism nor advanced sufficiently along a socialistic path.
The Bloomsbury set would be more pleased with ‘diversity equity inclusiveness’ slogans that have been adopted by today’s professional elites and become omnipresent in all but a handful of democracies and in nations where Islamic politics dominates. .... Read online ..... pdf
Australia’s ‘green energy’ chimera
The Spectator, 12 April 2023
T he government has asked the Joint Committee on Trade and Investment Growth to inquire into ‘Australia’s transition to a green energy superpower’. It wants ideas on how to accelerate growth in sectors covering renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles, and so on.
The inquiry attracted 125 submissions. A few submissions, like that of the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), pointed out that the proposal rests on the case for reducing human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide but that there is no scientific proof that this would have any significant effect on our climate. And, the non-Western world is not going down that same path, with the consequence that the de-carbonising economic suicide into which the West is sleepwalking, can .... Read online ..... pdf
The unsafe Safeguard Mechanism
The Spectator, 28 March 2023
A nd so, the Greens have joined the ALP in imposing additional carbon taxes on the top 215 greenhouse gas emitting firms. In passing the so-called Safeguard Mechanism, the voluntary program that the Coalition originally introduced is converted into a requirement on the nation’s top mining and industrial firms to reduce their emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. Those emissions are said to be 137 million tonnes a year. Their curtailment builds up to constitute 40 million tonnes a year. This is in addition to abatement measures already in place, which confer a subsidy on wind and solar, that has enabled those energy sources to displace a quarter of the supply formerly provided by coal.
One way to meet the new reductions is by ..... Read online ..... pdf
Slow rolling crisis or banking wildfire?
The Spectator, 23 March 2023
The world’s leading funds manager, BlackRock, has argued the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) may start a ‘slow rolling crisis’. This may be so but, at this point, bank share prices have stabilised (Chinese banks have even seen their share prices increase).
SVB was only sixteenth in terms of size within the United States. Yet it, and the smaller Signature Bank, were bailed out by the Biden Administration, ostensibly on the basis that their failure would cause contagion across the system. Perhaps, as many have conjectured, other factors, including SVB’s important role as a lender and bag-holder to the speculative tech industry, may have helped its path to salvation. ..... Read online ..... pdf
Silicon Valley Bank: doomed to fail?
The Spectator, 15 March 2023
The basic question to ask about the collapse of the $200 billion Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is, why did it take so long for such a collapse to occur?
The root cause of the bankruptcy is the vast increase in US government spending, which, like that of other governments, was not accompanied by matching increases in taxation. Inevitably, the outcome of that is an increasing money supply monetary policy. And the corollary of that will always be an increase in inflation.
When the US Federal Reserve started to combat the excessive supply of money it did so by the only way available – buying up debt – ..... Read online ..... pdf
Australia: suffocated by regulation and raided by greedy politicians The Spectator, 8 March 2023
Gary Banks in The Australian notes how government regulatory measures are destroying our vital comparative advantage in energy supply and promoting inefficient labour relations practices, while spending splurges have brought no improvement in outcomes, especially in health and education.
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Years of over-regulation and excessive spending have been pushed even higher by Labor. The Commonwealth Government has to maintain the momentum of carbon abatement by massive new regulatory impositions on the major carbon dioxide emitting firms and forcing consumers to fund new spending in the transmission lines for wind and solar.
..... Read online ..... pdf
Climate change: short on proof, drowning in nonsense
The Spectator, 27 February 2023
The environmentalist creed in context
Environmentalism, more particularly its prevalent global warming strain, dominates politics. It is the fourth such banner raised by the disgruntled that has conditioned politics since Medieval times.
Earlier eras saw politics underpinned by a struggle against government taxation which in the anglosphere can be marked by Magna Carta (1215), the English Civil War, and the American War of Independence. France experienced the ‘Fronde’ in 1648, which placed restraints on the king’s ability to levy new taxes, eventuating in the French Revolution a hundred and forty years later when the king was forced to convene a Parliament to seek ..... Read online ..... pdf
Is coal making a comeback? Australian mining’s uphill battle The Spectator, 19 February 2023
Coal supplies a quarter of the world’s energy, oil and gas account for a half, and renewables – in spite of vast subsidies everywhere they are built – comprise just 7 per cent.
While Germany is being ridiculed for re-opening coal mines, even tearing down a wind farm to do so, it is claiming this is only a temporary departure from its decarbonisation transition.
Such assurances are not being given by the fastest-growing developing nations.
Indeed, Bloomberg reports, regretfully, that coal is making a comeback
Climate ruminations: the markets reject Chalmers
The Spectator, 13 February 2023
Combatting the perceived incidence of global warming is driving government policies. In Australia this has been obvious for many years, but for the ALP it was clarified by the publication in the Monthly of the Treasurer’s philosophy on the need to remake capitalism. Jim Chalmers claims this is necessary because energy policy cannot be left to genuine market forces when we need to combat the effects on the Earth’s atmosphere by the combustion of fossil fuels.
That rests on the theoretic construct that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is likely to take place in the next 50 years, is causing about a 1 to 1.5°C warming and Australia, with 1 per cent of emissions, can be instrumental in stopping this. Most experts ..... Read online ..... pdf
"Chalming" no-one: Labor rommances communism
The Spectator, 29 January 2023
Jim Chalmers is proving to be the most iconoclastic Treasurer since the Whitlam government’s Jim Cairns, a man who only joined the Labor Party after his application to join the Communist Party was rejected. Cairns spearheaded a previous assault on conventional capitalist economic theory and, like Chalmers, sought to borrow, spend, and regulate the nation into prosperity with fairness. Both Chalmers and Cairns came into politics with doctorates in economic history – that of Chalmers was a hagiography of Paul Keating, whose policies he now wants to reverse.
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Like Cairns, Chalmers faced a budget crisis but was unable or unwilling to make the expenditure reductions necessary to rectify this.
Energy chaos: the shape of things to come
The Spectator, 25 January 2023
Australian governments have made energy policies focused on achieving higher shares of renewable energy that they claim is the cheapest source of power. The Commonwealth government is planning for renewables to reach 82 per cent of supply by 2030, while the Liberal Party’s plan is for 85 per cent by 2050 and 61 per cent by 2030. State governments have additional plans. In pursuit of these goals, governments around Australia are being sucked into a vortex requiring ever-increasing controls, while seeing mounting cost increases.
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Subsidies that amount to $6.9 billion per year have propelled wind and solar, which had virtually no market presence 20 years ago, to their current market share of 27 per cent. The CSIRO and other ..... Read online ..... pdf
Inquiry into Australia's transition to a green energy superpower
Submitted 22 November 2022
The inquiry seeks advice on how Australia can “transition to a green energy superpower”.
The Inquiry mentions a number of areas in respect to the “transition”, including:
• where trade and investment activities are already having a positive impact; and
• emerging and possible future trends.
It further seeks advice on how government agencies can assist in identifying opportunities and in assisting and subsidising new investment. It has particular interest in how activities can be assisted in areas the government has determined to be prospective. These, it says, include renewable energy, battery storage, energy supply and infrastructure, electric vehicle industry, infrastructure; advanced manufacturing, and services and technology.
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The Australian Environment Foundation notes multiple failures where industries designated by governments as being highly prospective have received favourable treatment from tariffs or support through financial assistance. None have succeeded. Some of these have been in the areas now, with little supporting evidence, once again being re-affirmed as worthy of support. ..... Read the submission here
The Old Man’s Tale
by Viv Forbes
The council man was adamant:
“The Law must have its way,
The shed you built is not approved
It must come down today.”
“No doubt the shed is safe and strong
And no one has complained,
But plans and rules must bind us all
Or anarchy will reign.”
​
The old man clenched his horny hands,
He gripped the planner’s arm,
Then changed his mind and led him out
To look around the farm.
​
“You see that shed” the old man said,“With shingle roof and wattle wall,With no advice from coots like youMy Grandpa built it all.”
“He came out here from Birmingham
With no help from the Crown,
Without a passport or a card
He sailed to Sydney town.”
“He got himself a riding horse
Bought cows and found a dray,
But sought no travel permits
As he left for Moreton Bay.”
“There were no maps to guide him
Once he left the city blocks,
And flooding of the Richmond
Cost him half his mob of stock.”
“But when he got to Moreton Bay
A sickness swept the place,
So Grandpa saddled up again
To see a safer base.”
“For weeks he struggled northwards
Thru the bush and hostile blacks,
Until he reached a mighty stream
Which stopped him in his tracks.”
“The soil was deep and fertile
And the flats were green and lush,
So Grandad thought he’d squat a while
He had no need to rush.”
“He cleared the scrub and dug a well
And found himself a wife,
He brought her to that wattle shed
To start their married life.”
“Then rangers tried to take his land
(For squatters rights were spurned.)
My folks were forced to sell their stock
To buy the land they’d earned.”
“My Pa was born in that old shed
He worked to earn his land
‘Twas he who built the homestead
And no planner lent a hand.”
“The sweat of generations
Feeds parasites like you,
And now you tell us builders:
‘This shed will never do.’
“With subtlety and cunning
You have nibbled at our rights,
You’ve taxed away our substance
So now we cannot fight.”
“But this is where I draw the line
And I won’t be alone,
So if you try to smash my shed
I’ll fight for what I own.”
“So clear off or I’ll clout you
Do not bother us again,
Take all your forms and files and fees
And shove them up the drain.”
The planner started shouting
But old Nigger bit his leg.
He cleared the fence, and yelled a threat:
“When next I come you’ll beg.”
The wreckers came next morning
But the neighbours got there first.
They stood six deep across the gate
And bid them do their worst.
Before the planners could react
Before the police could call
The old man’s son, a barrister,
Restrained them with the law.
He quoted laws and precedents,
He combed the ancient books,
He tied the council up for months
In writs and counter suits.
By then there were elections
And the old man led a team;
They sent the planners packing
And restored the builder’s dreams.
Once more a man could build a shed
Without a planner’s chit
And no one could invade his home
Unless he had a writ.
The planner got an honest job
The red tape was undone,
The Old Man got a Knighthood
His mighty fight was won.
Collapse of the $35 billion Sun Cable
The Spectator, 16 January 2023
Last week saw the collapse of Sun Cable, a pie-in-the-sky $35 billion plan by alternative energy enthusiasts, Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes, to generate solar energy and transport it by cable 4,200 kilometres to Singapore. The taxpayer provided $14 million for the project’s solar system, Australian-developed 5B. But major spending, which amounted to $210 million before Andrew Forrest pulled the plug, came from the two entrepreneurs.
Last week also saw Energy Minister Chris Bowen release his consultation for the disarmingly named Powering the Regions Fund. A centrepiece of this was weaponising the ‘Safeguard Mechanism’ from the emission reporting requirement that the Coalition ..... Read online ..... pdf
Dark money
The Spectator, 11 January 2023
Recent years have seen a strengthening dominance of politics over individual and commercial decision-making. This is readily evident in the growth of regulations and government spending increasing from under 20 per cent of the economy a century ago to around (and over) 50 per cent today.
Within democracies, these developments are due to electorates demanding income redistributions and tolerating increased national debt – oblivious to the adverse effects on their own future living standards. There are very few political leaders of stature like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, Margaret Thatcher, or Donald Trump who seek to persuade voters of the folly of such demands. Most opt for. ..... Read online ..... pdf
Batteries not included
The Spectator, 29 December 2022
Renewable energy battery farms threaten to cripple the economy with cyclic costs
The replacement of fossil fuels (and nuclear) by wind and solar is said to be a ‘transition’ implying, like that from sail to steam and horse to motor power, that this is being inexorably pushed by consumers adopting a lower cost technology. In fact, the ‘transition’, wherever it is taking place, is due to government subsidies and regulations. Not one significant unit of wind or solar power generation anywhere in the world has been installed without such assistance
Moreover, a wind/solar-rich electricity system requires expensive features that are naturally present or available at a trivial ..... Read online ..... pdf
Chris Bowen’s rendezvous with bad ideas
The Spectator, 22 December 2022
Back in July 2022, Chris Bowen the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, launched the latest CSIRO electricity costs report which says wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity supply. He said, ‘This underlines the need for Australia and the world to invest heavily in renewable energy sources to put downward pressure on power prices.’
He continues to call for eliminating coal and gas in Australia, claiming this is necessary to prevent harmful climate change. Climate change was the focus of his September address to the American Australian Association. He said 80 years ago, ‘Curtin and Roosevelt had a rendezvous with destiny. Our job is to avoid a rendezvous with ..... Read online ..... pdf
Energy collapse: it all begins with a market cap
The Spectator, 14 December 2022
Thousands of years of experience – from the ancient Babylonians and Roman Emperor Diocletian, through to modern times – have demonstrated how price controls prevent the allocation of scarce goods to their most valuable uses, lower short-term production, and cause investment to seize up.
The inevitability of such outcomes is lost on Australia’s political class. Politicians, egged on by self-interested and socialists, are once more embracing price controls that were abandoned in the 1980s when the Hawke-Keating government accepted market prices stemming from supply and demand as the most efficient means of running the economy
ESG: climate virtue bleeding super dry
The Spectator, 7 December 2022
B usiness, where the profit motive is explicitly dominant and where the hundreds of millions of direct and indirect owners want to see it remain the crowned ruler, might be expected to reject spending that syphons off profits to political causes… And yet, nearly every firm funnels funding to politically acceptable causes, in the main involving those of a social and environmental nature.
Sometimes, pressured by governmental regulatory stances, like the soon-to-be mandatory reductions on the top Australian emitters, a growing number of firms also engage in expenditure that replace fossil fuel derived energy with more expensive wind and solar. Also important is the avoidance by superannuation fund managers of ..... Read online ..... pdf
Dan enters the pantheon of ‘great’ leaders
The Spectator, 28 November 2022
N ow the hurley burley’s done, and Dan Andrews is in the pantheon of the state’s great leaders, it’s time to see what Victorians voted for.
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Like other electorates in the Western world, Victorians proved themselves to have a large appetite for government spending. The Lib-Nats joined Labor (and, of course the Greens) in proposing big increases in hand-outs. For Labor, these included subsidies for electricity, travel, kindergartens, and ‘infrastructure’.
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But, reflecting voter preferences for free stuff, Labor was reticent in approving tax increases to cover these increases. These election gifts therefore (as did the Liberals’ offerings) add to the ..... Read online ..... pdf
Victoria’s looming energy disaster
The Spectator, 23 November 2022
A centrepiece of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ campaign is to renationalise Victoria’s privately owned electricity businesses. He claims that the private owners have scammed ‘$23 billion in profits off pensioners, families, and businesses’.
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The state’s electricity assets, previously managed by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV) were sold under the Kennett government in the 1990s. Kennett inherited a near-bankrupt state.
The SECV had been a drain on government finances due to its excessive levels of staffing. Over-staffing is a hallmark of ..... Read online ..... pdf
Our retreat from rational economics
The Spectator, 16 November 2022
In today’s world, government spending accounts for up to and (in the EU) over 50 per cent of GDP – Australia’s at 38 per cent may be understated due to it being a federation. In the 1920s, no significant government spent more than 20 per cent of its nation’s GDP (federal spending in America and Australia was 4 per cent 6 per cent respectively).
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Sovereign debt is now well in excess of 100 per cent of GDP in most EU countries, America, and Japan – Australia’s is 57 per cent. Until 100 years ago no state went into debt except to combat an existential crisis – indeed few states had the creditworthiness to do so.
Greta and her green-communism
The Spectator, 8 November 2022
Many breathed a sigh of relief when Greta Thunberg announced she was not going to attend COP 27 Climate Change meeting which is now underway at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. The COP process is a ‘greenwashing scam’, she explained.
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It seemed that the girl, although not even having reached the age of 20, had already emerged from the catharsis of teenage simplistic idealism. Was she having doubts about promoting a goal of dubious worth at a cost that is unknown but without a scientific breakthrough is incalculably high? Seemingly so, and that corroborated the notion that at a coming of age (historically at 21), she reached a maturity society expects of each emerging generation to take balanced judgements ..... Read online ..... pdf
Andrews’ Leninist approach to power
The Spectator, 24 October 2022
Last week, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews paraded his inner Lenin. He attacked Victoria’s privately owned coal generation businesses, claiming that they have taken ‘$23 billion in profits off pensioners, families and businesses’ and announced that they must be effectively driven out of business by state-owned alternatives.
Those facilities were sold to the private sector during the 1990s.
Jeff Kennett and his Treasurer Alan Stockdale pushed through the privatisations, which netted $11 billion for the ..... Read online ..... pdf
Dirty dependency: superannuation and ESG
The Spectator, 21 October 2022
Condemning those who have glued themselves to roads to create chaos, the (now former) UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman hit out at ‘the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating, Wokerati anti-growth coalition’. Her indignation about the economic damage caused by climate radicals is warranted, but she said nothing about the economic harm stemming from the fund-manager/governmental institutional wing of the anti-coal climate alarmists, which uses the Environment Social and Governance (ESG) pastiche as cover for its control aspirations.
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Indeed, as she was speaking the Bank of England..... Read online ..... pdf
Dead-weight drowning productivity
The Spectator, 14 October 2022
Productivity growth is the key to income growth – we can’t have the latter without the former. A matter that has troubled many economists in the Western world during recent decades is a slowdown in productivity growth.
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Australia is typical. Multi-factor productivity – the overall return on labour and capital inputs combined – has been growing at only 0.3 per cent per year in recent years, while the more commonly understood, labour productivity, has also seen growth at only 0.9 per cent a year. These are half the levels seen in the 1990s.
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That slowdown is less evident in many countries ..... Read online ..... pdf
The price of environmental activism
The Spectator, 7 October 2022
The environment social and governance (ESG) movement commenced life over 100 years ago with wowser investors avoiding shares in brewers and distillers. Embargoes on the merchants of sin, with gambling and smoking joining alcohol, have long ceased to be the primary target. The sin is now hydrocarbon energy (particularly coal), with gas and oil as secondary prey. That other bête noir of green agitators, nuclear, is considered an additional activity to be avoided and divested.
With this agenda, ESG investors have come to dominate stock exchanges, and their funds expected to total $50 trillion by 2025 which is over one-third of total global stocks. ..... Read online ..... pdf
Argentina’s socialist demons are coming for the West
The Spectator, 26 September 2022
How did we arrive at the position where, throughout the Western world, political decisions to undermine the cheapest and most reliable energy sources are bringing about economic stagnation and possibly collapse?
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Notwithstanding evidence of this, why are policy settings intensifying the very measures that have created the breakdown?
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Europe is seeing record energy prices and the America’s renewable subsidy-oriented Inflation Reduction Act portends a following of suit.
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For Australia, similar measures are intensified by law courts deciding that individual Indigenous voices, now extending to a ..... Read online ..... pdf
The sharp decline since Paris
The Spectator, 14 September 2022
Returning from the 2015 Paris Agreement, former Clinton Energy chief Joe Romm, proclaimed:
​
‘You know, change happens slowly, until it happens quickly.’
He was talking about climate ‘guru’ Michael Mann declaring that the Paris Agreement signalled the end of ‘the age of fossil fuels’.
​
Of course, there was a major speed bump along that road in the form of Donald Trump, who commenced dismantling the subsidies and regulations that were forcing this rapid change in the world’s biggest economy. And, to the ridicule of the German UN delegation including its Foreign Minister, Trump presciently urged Germany to. ..... Read online ..... pdf
Transition teething problem or permanent disaster?
The Spectator, 27 August 2022
Politicians, regulators, and subsidy-seekers portray the present difficulties in the energy market as being part of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy – and perhaps to more exotic forms of energy derived from extracting hydrogen from water.
​
They go on to claim that transitions always involve teething problem difficulties.
​
This is false.
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Transitions in the past from horse-drawn transport to trains, motor vehicles, and aeroplanes involved only benefits to ..... Read online ..... pdf
Dangerous energy politics
The Spectator, 02 September 2022
Electricity has properties that require supply and demand to always balance every few seconds.
​
This means, firstly, that there has to be a considerable surplus of supply in order to cope with swings in demand. Secondly, a large share of supply (and/or demand) has to be capable of rapidly switching on and off.
There is probably no other area of the economy with such time-sensitive complexity and an array of different providers with vastly dissimilar cost profiles.
​
Electricity is an area of commerce that is highly unsuitable for political control. ..... Read online ..... pdf
An Open Letter Concerning AEMO’s 2022 Integrated System Plan
By Dr James Taylor PhD
Independent Engineers and Scientists ..... Read here
A mild case of split portfolio disorder
The Spectator, 18 August 2022
As a one-time senior public servant, I find the debate over Scott Morrison’s supposed power seizure of separate ministries to be based on somewhat unrealistic depictions of the powers of individual ministers.
There are two issues in Prime Minister Morrison’s visits to the Governor-General. The first concerns the massive overreaction to Covid and the Prime Minister’s decision to formally appoint himself as several ministers as an insurance against his colleagues’ incapacitation and, astonishingly, doing so without informing those colleagues. The second was the insertion of himself as de facto Minister in the Department of Industry, Energy and Resources.
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With regard to the latter, Morrison has said, ..... Read online ..... pdf
Labor’s Climate Bill is an economic precipice
The Spectator, 08 August 2022
In what The Australian called a ‘capitulation of the Greens’, the government’s Climate Bill has passed the House of Representatives. Its passage through the Senate is a formality.
​
With the Bill’s central requirement being that greenhouse gas emissions fall by 43 per cent (from the 2005 base), it amplifies the 28-30 per cent formal reduction level set by the previous Coalition government. In pursuit of decarbonisation to combat a mythical ‘climate crisis’, the Bill is designed to stymie the use of coal and gas. In doing so, it will increase the costs of mining, manufacturing, and other services; it will also increase costs in the farming sector – including by diverting the use of productive agricultural land into a carbon sink. ..... Read online ..... pdf
Wrecking a Nation One Electricity Bill at a Time
Quadrant Online, 29 July 2022
The first thing to recognise is that for many years now governments — Labor and Coalition alike — have been hard at work destroying the low-cost electricity market that Australian businesses and consumers once enjoyed . The second thing to note is that there is an actual undertone of energy realism — yes, really! –about the Albanese government, but it is no portend of good news: “You’ll know what we’re up against when your electricity bill arrives,” the Treasurer said on Thursday (July 28). That would be the bill we were assured during election season would fall by $275 once Labor waved its magic wand.
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We can see the degeneration of Australia’s electricity security graphically presented in the chart below which tracks July electricity ..... Read online
Politicians destroy nuclear when the world needs it most
The Spectator, 25 July 2022
Human advancement has rested on harnessing increasingly dense sources of energy from non-human origins. Animal power, burning wood, wind technology, and water power were crucial in allowing early civilisations to develop.
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The Industrial Revolution that gave humanity income levels 10-100 times higher than those of antiquity was driven by hydrocarbons which brought over 100 times the power density of wind.
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Nuclear, with 10,000 times the power density of coal, has been heralded as ‘the next step’ for the last fifty years. ..... Read online .....pdf
Europeans punished by expensive renewables backed by Russian gas
The Spectator, 14 July 2022
Europeans are now paying heavily for their shift in abandoning coal and nuclear and adopting renewable energy supported by Russian gas.
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Across the continent, coal generators have been closed as have nuclear facilities in a headlong pursuit of the ‘transition’ to renewables. Throughout the Western world, that transition has been touted as inevitable by the ‘experts’ now dominant within government and among their advisory detritus.
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Only this week Australia’s very own CSIRO ..... Read online .....pdf
The (expensive) brave new world of ‘clean energy’
The Spectator, 09 July 2022
The market was working pretty well 20 years ago and is not expected to be much larger by 2030. It involved a capital asset base in terms of transmission at about $22 billion and for the electricity energy itself, in today’s dollars about $100 billion.
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We now have two national plans for the future: Rewiring the Nation, ..... Read online .....pdf
Climate Justice? Victoria’s fresh assault on businesses
The Spectator, 01 July 2022
Last week’s restoration of the electricity market, following the regulator assuming full control on June 15, means the energy crisis is apparently over. But spot prices remain at around $230 per megawatt hour – a mere sixfold their historical levels. As for gas, well that’s still price-controlled and consequent supply shortages are causing business closures.
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Victoria has done his bit to create the crisis.
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Premier Dan Andrews tripled the royalty tax on coal – the straw that broke the back of the Hazelwood Power Station, which produced a quarter of the state’s electricity. Then, as with South Australia’s .... Read online ...pdf
Climate Change's 'Pigouvian' tax
The Spectator, 27 June 2022
Rod Sims, formerly head of the ACCC, advocates a carbon tax as a ‘Pigouvian’ solution to the global damage which he says is being created as a result of burning coal, gas, and oil.
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A ‘Pigouvian’ tax is set at a level where the damage from distorting the economy, which any tax inevitably causes, is offset by the rectification that it brings about. Such a tax is generally considered superior to having the government centrally determine measures to redress inadvertent damages resulting from production. This is because it incentivises firms to seek out the cheapest solutions and avoids governmental failures inherent in ‘winner picking’
Henry Ergas points out that the proposal Rod Sims .... Read online ...pdf
Standard of living to fall sharply
The Spectator, 24 June 2022
In the pre-Covid days, strike activity was fast disappearing. In Europe, the average days lost from strikes more than halved.
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In Australia, the fall was even more dramatic – from over 500 strike days per 1,000 workers in the 1970s, to just 14 in the decade to 2020.
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Suddenly, in Europe a spate of strikes is underway. They are in England and threatened in France, Spain, Italy, and even Germany. These are taking place ‘amid spiralling increases in the cost of living’ which describes EU annual wage increases averaging 2 per cent compared to price increases of 8.8 per cent. ..... Read online .....pdf
Albo's war against Capitalism
The Spectator, 21 June 2022
Seeking to disabuse critics of the notion that his interest and expertise in economics were Whitlamesque, Anthony Albanese released a couple of pages of an undergraduate essay on economics he wrote nearly 40 years ago. The material was replete with supply and demand curves to burnish his credentials on any sceptic.
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Mr Albanese’s economics degree was from the ‘political economy’ school of Sydney University – which had a strongly Marxian focus – stressing on how the economy should best be managed by those who consider themselves well able to understand and manipulate it. The university mentors favoured central direction rather than what they perceived as the anarchy and heartlessness of the market system. ..... Read online .....pdf
Politicians have sabotaged the energy market
The Spectator, 13 June 2022
'After a decade of denial and delay, Australia deserves a better future – one with cheaper power, more jobs, and less emissions,’ said Energy Minister Chris Bowen, in his last media release prior to gaining government.
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Mr Bowen advocated replacing coal generators with wind and solar, with their shares of electricity supply to increase from 30 per cent to 82 per cent by 2030. To facilitate this, he proposed spending $80 billion on transmission, thereby quadrupling its present costs.
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He also ridiculed a Morrison government that ‘does not believe renewables are the cheapest form of energy, or that the ..... Read online .....pdf
Customers won't like the new energy game
The Spectator, 3 June 2022
Right now in Australia, we are seeing some smaller electricity retailers being forced out of the market and voluntarily shedding customers. One example came this week, when ReAmped Energy told customers they should leave because bills were set to double.
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These sorts of retailers have gained a few percent of the overall market by offering cheap prices via wholesale purchases on the electricity spot market, which is usually cheaper than arranging supplies through long-term contracts with generators.
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But with shortages of electricity (which are from time to time inevitable) come very high spot market prices. What we are ..... Read online .....pdf
This is worse than we thought
The Spectator, 24 May 2022
It’s much worse than we thought.
The ALP will govern in its own right, but will be forced into extreme positions by a Green-left Senate.
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The first thing to recognise is that the result demonstrates a new consensus.
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There are some differences between the ALP, the Coalition, the Teals, and the Greens. To placate its funders within the union movement the ALP will seek to abolish the ‘gig’ economy and promote a 5 per cent wage rise, something the Greens would also support. But that apart, the consensus represents a goal of abandoning the fossil fuel ..... Read online .....pdf
The Seinfeld election: a show about nothing
The Spectator, 17 May 2022
With the virus abating, and with the confected anger over supposed government inadequacies for compensation owed to those harmed by adverse weather conditions losing topicality – the issues that should be dominating the present election campaign are taxation, spending, energy costs, industry policy, and defence.
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The Coalition and the ALP have tried to minimise their differences on these matters.
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For its part, the Coalition has little alternative after five years of clothing itself in the ALP policies it claims to oppose. It has been spending in Whitlam-esque proportions since its MPs ..... Read more .....pdf
Build More Dams
Letter to the Editor, Regulation Economics (from Viv Forbes) - 12 May 2022​
Since the days of Joseph in ancient Egypt, droughts have periodically rationed water and food supplies for humans and wildlife. Sensible peoples store water, but it is about 40 years since Australians built a big dam – young Aussie engineers have no damn experience.
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Even beavers build dams and weirs to provide long-term wetlands and food supplies along rivers. Dams also moderate floods downstream.
See here for pictorial comment (right):
Foolish children and Green politicians think that floods are caused by carbon dioxide, but farmers know that it is La Nina that brings flooding rains to Eastern Australia ..... Read more
The politics of an energy dystopia
The Spectator, 10 May 2022
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We are seeing unprecedented prices in the Australian gas and electricity wholesale markets.
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The first five days of May saw electricity prices average over $400 per MWh in Queensland and NSW, and over $150 per MWh in Victoria and South Australia. Compare this with the historical average daily prices of $40-$80 per MWh.
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Forward electricity prices for 2023 averaged 122 per cent higher than in 2021.
Stoking the fires of energy policy
The Spectator, 26 April 2022
Stung from previous election losses, the ALP is at pains to deny that it will introduce a carbon tax. The Coalition is trying to claim a Labor government would do so.
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That aside, both sides are seeking to marginalise environmental issues and their all-important impact on the economy. Many on the government side believe the Matt Kean dogma that there is an inevitable ‘transition’ away from coal, while others feel obliged to murmur assent in the face of popular support for that same view, funded as it is by subsidy-dependent renewable energy interests.
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In fact, we already have carbon taxes and an ALP ..... Read online ..... pdf
Scomo, Albo, and their fantasy Net Zero policies
The Spectator, 15 April 2022
Both the ALP and the Coalition have the same Net Zero goal for 2050, but that time frame is, at best, aspirational and is contingent upon technological breakthroughs many of which verge on the fantasy.
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A 2030 time-horizon is a more realistic means of comparing the two sides of politics.
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For 2030, the Coalition has a goal of a 26 per cent reduction in emissions compared to the base year of 2005 and hopes to achieve a 35 per cent reduction with its present policies.
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The ALP is targeting a 43 per cent reduction on ..... Read online ..... pdf
Renewables subsidies: $22 billion by 2030
The Spectator, 5 April 2022
Energy Minister Angus Taylor noted that the Commonwealth Budget added $1.3 billion to assist uneconomic renewable energy, bringing the total support to $22 billion by 2030. Added to direct budget support are the regulatory subsidies that force consumers to pay for otherwise unviable wind and solar energy as well as the networks that have to be built to bring their energy to market.
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Green energy enthusiasts and vested interests fraudulently claim wind and solar are cheaper than coal-generated electricity. Some also concoct data purporting to prove that fossil fuels benefit from enormous subsidies.
You can't save the world with Net Zero
The Spectator, 24 March 2022
Ever since socialism’s credibility collapsed in 1990, environmentalism has increasingly dominated the political agenda. Central to this was the global warming scare and its implications for energy supply and economic activities in general.
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Environmentalists’ pressures ensured that this agenda was widely embraced. Every Western country agreed to pursue ‘Net Zero’ carbon emissions, replacing hydrocarbons with wind, solar, and prospectively hydrogen as power sources. In most countries, this was combined with rejecting another environmentalist bogeyman – nuclear power.
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China, India, and other burgeoning economies ..... Read online ..... pdf
Will war end the climate alarmist zeal of the central banks?
The Spectator, 21 March 2022
Faced with implacable opposition from the Senate, Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Biden’s pick for supervising banks within the Federal Reserve (Fed), has withdrawn her candidature. During the Obama administration, she was one of the Fed’s seven governors and a Treasury deputy secretary.
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Her rejection by the Senate was a result of her expressed intent ‘to incentivise a rapid, orderly, and just transition from fossil fuels and other high-emission investments’.
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Not so long ago, that opinion would have not been a barrier to the job – indeed her appointments under Obama faced