This is unjust.
As Australia’s vandalised electricity grid looks set to fail this summer, it is people on the lowest incomes who are being hit hardest by climate policies.
Speaking at Family First’s National Conference in Sydney last weekend, the deputy executive director of the Institute for Public Affairs think tank, Daniel Wild, revealed new research from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which proves this.
WATCH Daniel Wild's speech on the ADH TV website.
“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.
“It is the lowest income families who have been hit the hardest.
“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 at the turn of the millennium, Australia had “the lowest energy prices in the world”.
“Now we have among the highest.
“This was no an accident, it was a direct and immediate result of government policy.
“Whenever you put more renewables into the grid, prices go up. In the last two years prices for families have gone up by 50 percent.”
Wild’s comments at the conference came as the Australian Energy Market Operator, AEMO, was again warning of the risk of blackouts because renewable energy can’t provide base-load electricity.
Australia's biggest cities are at risk of rolling blackouts in the coming summers as temperatures rise and coal power plants shut down, the energy regulator has warned.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said "urgent" investment is required to ensure the reliability of the National Energy Market (NEM) after its annual Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO) report found the power network isn't transitioning to renewables as quickly as it needs to.
Family First believes net zero policies should be paused until a proper engineering and cost benefit analysis of renewables is conducted.
Family First also believes nuclear energy should be included in the mix and notes that battery technology that can store power for cities has not been invented.
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