There’s nothing like the smell of a plutocratic barny in the morning. From the chairman of the Government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) review, Dick Warburton:
The RET review, due to be handed to the federal government in the next two weeks, is expected to reduce the minimum amount of Australia’s electricity required to be produced from clean energy sources such as wind and solar.
…He said the legislative barriers in the Senate, with major budget items being vetoed by the Palmer United Party and others on the cross benches, did not augur well for possible changes to the RET. “It would be disappointing, it would be frustrating, but that seems to be Clive Palmer,” Mr Warburton told The Australian Financial Review.
“It’s just crazy politics at the moment. Virtually what seems to be 75 per cent of what the government puts up Clive Palmer says he’s not going to allow to go through which is pretty dumb politics as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
It’s crazy politics alright. Clive Palmer plays it well. But so does Dick Warburton. He’s a former director of Caltex and self-confessed climate change skeptic, as well as a former director of the yet to be Royal Commission investigated Note Printing Australia. Yet here he is chairing an investigation into Australia’s only remaining climate change policy with the clear objective of gutting it.
The modelling for that review was provided by ACIL Allen and it found that power prices will get very slightly cheaper in the short term if the RET is cut but very much cheaper in the long if it is not. Indeed, if it were boosted they would get cheaper still:
Meanwhile, billions in renewables capex is on hold and will disappear if the RET is cut, even as Australia goes over the mining capex cliff. And, given the dark cloud hanging over “direct action”, the nation will have no operational climate-mitigation policy to ensure it meets its UN obligations.
It’s completely barmy politics, Dick.
