Nicely put and thanks for reading:
What’s much easier to believe, though, is that the gas industry is desperate to get its hands on gas supplies that are off limits – especially controversial ones like, say, coal seam gas. And if they have to offer a little more domestic supply to do it – at a time when global demand is slowing anyway – then it’s hardly a sacrifice. Oh, and as it happens, that’s exactly what Turnbull would like to offer them, hence his condemnation of the states’ bans on further gas extraction.
It’s a neat trick, really. Take a country with enough gas to supply itself “indefinitely”, send the vast majority of it overseas, refuse to sell locally at a fair price, create a domestic shortage, then demand access to some of our most environmentally sensitive resources as though it’s an emergency measure.
And if you’re going to pull a trick like that, this is the government to pull it on. Sure, Turnbull announced some useful initiatives to increase transparency in the market. But the Turnbull government’s energy wars have led it to the point that it simply cannot resist any opportunity to turn this back on the (Labor) states. It’s only too happy to paint this as a problem of Victoria or South Australia’s creation, as though gas companies have been passive observers, buffeted by market forces rather than subverting them. Well, now those companies can passively observe as the political campaign revs up to give them much of what they want. That’s their carrot. Sticks, it seems, are only for political foes.
Put it on The Project too, Waleed.
