As mums and dads struggle to pay their electricity bills, Anthony Albanese today announced another $2 billion of borrowed money would be thrown at windmills and solar farms.
This is for so-called “green energy” to prop up aluminium smelting which is struggling because so-called renewables are expensive and unreliable for manufacturing.
In contrast, Donald Trump will take the oath of office tomorrow vowing no more taxpayer money for windmills.
“Windmills are an economic and environmental disaster. I don’t want even one built during my Administration. The thousands of dead and broken ones should be ripped down ASAP. Most expensive energy, only work with massive government subsidies, which we will no longer pay!”
He plans to “drill baby drill” to unleash the “liquid gold” under Americans’ feet and in doing so slash energy prices.
But everything Anthony Albanese and nine years of net-zero-obsessed Coalition government has done has raised the price of electricity and pushed us into a cost-of-living crisis.
Aluminium smelting didn’t need “green energy” subsidies from the taxpayer when power came from cheap and reliable coal.
“We need to be more than a quarry. We need to be a country that value adds ourselves, not that exports the raw material, waits for someone else to create jobs and value add, and then import the products back,” Albanese said today as he justified his latest election handout.
But if “green energy” was so cheap (remember the $275 reduction in electricity prices?), why does it need to suck on the taxpayer teat?
We were value adding our aluminium very well before the Coalition and Labor started closing coal-fired power stations to “save the planet”.
Australia’s gold may not be liquid but it is gaseous, rocky and yellow caked.
Albo won’t touch any of it for domestic use because he thinks that’s virtuous for the climate.
Hypocritically he’s happy to take the rivers of gold in royalties from coal and gas sent overseas, ignoring that burning it there is still burning it.
As Trump tacks away from the Coalition and Labor’s commitment to the economy-destroying Paris accord and as Australians watch America becoming wealthy again, pressure may well build here for political change.
Family First is standing Senate candidates in Qld, NSW, Vic and SA, supported by a team of lower house candidates, who are committed to cutting power prices by prioritising gas, coal and nuclear.
Family First is pushing for a pause on Net Zero policies until a proper economic and engineering cost-benefit has been produced.