Australia's energy transition is to higher bills and blackouts.

The only energy transition Australia is making is away from cheap and reliable electricity.

What comes next is unaffordable and unreliable.

It’s a great leap into the dark – literally.

It’s stunning to see the debate now pivot to how we can “keep the lights on”.

Only weak and woke politicians could have brought a resource rich country like Australia to a place like this.

“Energy” Minister Chris Bowen’s plans to carpet an area half the size of Victoria with solar panels, industrial windmills and new transmission towers doesn’t solve the problem of what to do when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.

Everybody knows it except him.

Chris Bowen

Battery technology to supply a modern city on a windless night for more than a few minutes does not exist.

It has not been invented.

Family First has long argued that net zero policies, which are supported by both Liberal and Labor, should be paused until a proper cost-benefit analysis of the engineering and economics is conducted.

Australians can’t afford the bills and blackouts.

The Coalition this month rejected a policy similar to Family First’s, vowing to stick with net zero.

Sadly, our politicians have been making it up as they go along sounding moral because of a supposed immanent “climate catastrophe”.

Since Australia embarked on “climate policy” with the Howard Government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) - a taxpayer subsidy for erecting windmills and solar panels – 20 years ago, prices have gone up and reliability has gone down.

As Daniel Wild of the Institute for Public Affairs pointed out at the recent Family First national conference, Australia had the cheapest electricity costs in the OECD prior to the RET, now it has amongst the most expensive.

And the poor are hit the hardest.

“The lowest 20 per cent of families by income – 15 percent of their income is now spent on energy,” Wild said.

By contrast, people in the highest quintile by wealth spent just one percent.

“Those people in the inner cities who are telling us we need to have net zero and that we need to have more renewables on our grid, they are not the ones paying the price.

“It is the working men and the working women of this country on whose shoulders this renewable energy and this climate zealotry is being put upon,” Wild said.

The power sources which are reliable and cheap – coal, gas and nuclear – are now off the table according to our politicians.

Liberal and Labor governments have been closing coal-fired power stations despite not having developed alternative sources of base-load electricity.

Reality has finally caught up with the NSW Government which has vowed to fork out taxpayer money to walk back the planned closure of Eraring station.

No one thought this through.

No electricity bill has gone down because of intermittent renewable energy being pumped into the grid.

Bowen yesterday tried to rule out nuclear as too expensive, even though at $387 billion it is one third of the $1.5 trillion price tag for his renewables between now and 2030.

Bowen does not appear to be a particularly smart man. The debate has reached farcical proportions.

Australia’s climate policy drips with hypocrisy as we ban coal and gas use to benefit our citizens while they both remain two of our most lucrative exports to other countries.

Can’t burn it here but can burn in there.

Whose climate are we saving and at what cost to our people?

Have Liberal and Labor politicians ever embarked on sillier policy?