Liar delivers billions more to gas robber barons

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I can barely bring myself to write on this subject anymore. It is toxic beyond belief such that it only goes to prove how stupid is my fellow man rather than delivering any kind of justice.

I give you the Liar’s latest gas robber baron atrocity:

Big gas users have lost a long-running spat with producers over introducing a mechanism to lower domestic prices over a year after the Morrison government told the two sides to thrash out an industry-led code of conduct.

As part of its gas-fired recovery plan, the government in September 2020 told commercial and industrial customers to negotiate the code with suppliers amid ongoing complaints that gas prices were too high for manufacturers to keep their plants open. If they failed to agree a pact voluntarily, Canberra threatened to step in with a mandatory code.

Large users including Qenos and Incitec Pivot, Australia’s biggest commercial gas buyer, entered the talks agitating for a mechanism to regulate prices on the east coast. Orica complained manufacturers were paying a premium for the cost of export plants built by big Queensland LNG producers and demanded the competition regulator’s LNG netback formula — effectively the price of LNG shipped overseas less processing and shipping costs — should be amended.

…Gas users said the code did not address their main concern over high prices.

No shit. This follows on from the following from the Liar:

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  • Gas robber barons ravage the east coast economy with monopolist price gouging from 2014 via skyrocketing gas and power prices.
  • Liar blames renewables for higher power prices and sets about increasing gas development.
  • When renewables still develop and bring down gas-triggered power price hikes, Liar instals a range of gas development subsidies including for the Narrabri industrial dystopia.
  • Post-COVID, Liar says Australia needs an independent industrial base. Liar lies and instead encourages gas robber barons to hollow out more industry.
  • Liar makes an enemy of China while shipping three-quarters of east coast gas to same to build weapons to shoot at Australia.
  • Liar promises domestic reservation in return for Rex Patrick support on tax cuts.
  • Liar lies and delivers instead today’s “code of conduct”, another technocratic form of lying.
  • Liar takes the robber barons to COP 26 where they brand Australia’s contribution to climate change mitigation including marketing collateral, PM speeches and full-court press of hydrogen and CCS lies.

The Liar is unfit to govern.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.