Albo’s energy crisis rolls on unabated today with power prices still up 500% since early this year:
This will still deliver 6% to the CPI over the next year or more. There is no end in sight for the imported war-profiteering prices. On the contrary:
Russian gas giant Gazprom said Monday it was cutting daily gas deliveries via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to 33 million cubic metres starting Wednesday.
That would correspond to 20% of the pipeline’s capacity. The current flow of gas into Germany is only at 40%.
The company said it was halting the operation of another turbine due to the “technical condition of the engine”.
The polls are starting to register the shock:
Just one-quarter of voters think Labor is doing a good job of handling surging cost of living pressures, the latest Guardian Essential poll suggests, while a majority of respondents believe the Albanese government can influence the direction of inflation and interest rates.
The results from the latest survey of 1,082 respondents comes ahead of Wednesday’s inflation data which is expected to show consumer prices are running at their highest level since the 1990s.
The federal treasurer, Jim Chalmers, will deliver his first economic statement to parliament on Thursday which will foreshadow a difficult federal budget in October.
The Guardian Essential poll indicates a majority of Australians believe, even in an era of deregulation, that the government can exert influence over a range of economic factors including debt, the unemployment rate, inflation, fuel prices, workforce supply and interest rates.
(from left) Western Australia Labor senator Fatima Payman, Fowler independent Dai Le, Labor MP for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour and Labor MP for Tangney Sam Lim.
The 47th parliament is the most diverse ever – but still doesn’t reflect AustraliaThe poll also suggests voters are looking for more relief on cost of living pressures, with 40% of respondents saying the new government is doing a poor job. Only 23% rate the performance to date as good, while 37% say the Albanese government’s performance is neither good nor poor.
When asked about their own financial position, more than half of the voters surveyed say they can afford household bills but struggle to find anything extra (39%) or report feeling under financial pressure (17%). Forty-one per cent of respondents report being financially comfortable.
Needless to say, Albo’s abandoned low-income households are the most concerned.
There is some slightly less catastrophic news. The AEMO’s forcing of gas south from the QLD export cartel has dropped gas prices to an average of around $36Gj, the lowest they’ve been for a while.
This is a large part of the answer to the crisis (the second piece being lower coal prices) and, hopefully, the forthcoming ACCC and ADGSM reviews will add a price trigger at $7Gj to ensure that this crisis never happens again.
Gottiboff is demanding a different solution:
I have obtained access to one of the most secret, but nation-changing documents in Australia – the Exxon estimates of Victoria’s massive low-cost, onshore, likely carbon neutral gas reserves that do not require fracking.
They are near the Longford, Gippsland, treatment plant and the east coast pipeline network. The best-case Exxon estimate is that the reserves total 4.996 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas or some 60 per cent of the last 50 years of Bass Strait production.
But there is a “high” estimate of reserves at 12.6234 TCF that makes the Victorian reserves second only to the North West Shelf.
Obviously, Gottiboff did not “obtain” anything. He was given it by the cartel. I support the development of more gas reserves under strict environmental and macroeconomic guidelines.
The problem is, why would the public trust the cartel to do it after its appalling behaviour over the past decade? The cartel has torpedoed these projects by failing to convince the public of their safety and usefulness while they gouge everybody.
A good example is the Narrabri gas project underway in NSW. The NSW government commissioned the Chief Scientist to examine the pros and cons of unconventional gas extraction. Professor Mary O’Kane struck a sensible balance with a regime of 16 controls to ensure the development was safe.
But, that regulatory structure then collapsed in parliament under pressure from the gas cartel. The egregiously corrupt Morrison Government subsequently forced the project through anyway in its “gas-led recovery”.
That’s the kind of folks we’re dealing with here. They demand trust as they gaslight like villains.
Smash ’em with domestic reservation, export levies or super-profits taxes.
