Yes, he’s done it again, at the AFR is Ben Potter:
Is the National Energy Guarantee really the best chance we have of – at long last – ending 15 years of incompetence and political infighting in energy and climate policy making?
Or is the NEG a face-saving fig leaf to cover for the Turnbull government’s failure to get an explicit carbon emissions trading scheme past its own back bench – one that will entrench the market power of big “gentailers”?
Or – third option – will it just be a dead letter once the Australian Energy Market Operator gets the strategic reserve and day-ahead market mechanisms that it’s seeking to deal with most of the security and reliability problems that have plagued the National Electricity Market in the last few years?
…right now the NEG is such a blank slate that you can find advocates for all three positions and more, though the policy’s sensitivity makes many reluctant to go on the record.
The article is the answer to its own question. What is a “blank slate” for Australia’s most important economic reform over the next thirty years doing in the public domain at all?
The AFR can’t fix this mess nor should it have to. Nobody I know understands the NEG. The public debate is rife with contradictions. The Government has no answers yet it keeps insisting that everyone get behind it.
It’s the Nothing Energy Guarantee. A broken policy process farting out another idea on the run from a government and leader that is masterful at form and disastrous at function.
