What is this garbage?
Treasurer Jim Chalmers is very concerned about rising power prices amid the inflationary environment around the world, calling it the “most problematic factor in our inflation problem”.
“Firstly, we are very concerned about what is happening with power prices,” he told reporters.
“It’s a combination of what’s happening around the world, a combination of that with extreme weather and, frankly, these are the costs and consequences of a decade now of denial and delay when it comes to having a stable policy environment.
“It is going to be the most problematic aspect of our inflation problem over the course of the next six or nine months. I have had a number of conversations with Treasury and with others about it.”
Is it the Treasurer of Australia’s job to describe the outcomes of his own failed policymaking? Or is it his job to fix them?
Chicken Chalmers can stop the energy shock in its tracks with domestic reservation, export levies, or super profits taxes for gas and coal. But he refuses to do so because he is afraid that he might upset a few miners:
A Labor source said Dr Chalmers was still “scarred” from the failed “super profits” mining tax in 2010 when he was a senior adviser to then treasurer Wayne Swan, and that he did not want to revisit the idea.
The consequences of this cowardice are shocking. Chicken Chalmers will deliver the largest dump in Australian household real income in modern history:
According to my best guess (using annual data) this will make Chicken Chalmers responsible for the worst shock to living standards of any treasurer since 1983 (and probably a lot longer but there is no data):
Note, especially, that if it were not for Chicken Chalmer’s self-confessed failure to confront the energy cartels, Australians would be creaming it with fantastically low inflation and high real income growth.
And that’s not all. Chicken Chalmers is also busy blaming his own failings on the central bank, egging the RBA to lift rates higher. This ensures that Australian wealth will also be trashed to the maximum possible extent to make room for the economically destructive energy cartels:
“When there’s a big and widening gap between US interest rates and Australian interest rates that risks putting downward pressure on our currency, which makes imports more expensive,” he said.
“That has implications for inflation – that’s the mechanics of it.”
This is beyond asinine. It is ineptitude indistinguishable from treason.
Soaring gas and ergo electricity prices that are set globally cannot be fixed with higher interest rates. They must be addressed through direct government intervention. Specifically, reserving east coast gas and coal for domestic use, export levies, and/or super profits taxes. Only these will delink east coast energy prices from the war-torn global market and aid rather than enrage a hawkish RBA.
Today, Chicken Chalmers is learning the hard way that the more you give a rent seeker, the more it will want. The unreconstructed Davosian lunatics at the AFR spent months defending the Evil Gas Cartel from changes to the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism (ADGSM). Now they are roasting the plucked treasurer alive for adopting their own policy point of view:
So, the Chicken has hatched a new plan:
Dr Chalmers said he, Ms King, Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Industry Minster Ed Husic, were working on a plan “to see what else can be done beyond the near-term updating of the heads of agreement [ADGSM] that Minister King did with the companies”.
“I do think there’s more that can be done. I think all of those ministers recognise that the way that our gas industry regulation is set up has not been delivering the kinds of outcomes that we want to see and so if you recognise that, and I do, then you recognise that if more can be done, it should be done.”
The focus is on the code of conduct between gas producers and customers which was absent of any measure on price.
Mr Husic said he has told gas companies “the game has changed”.
What? Since last week when Mad King gave away the farm in her already-signed new ADGSM?
Here is the cover page of said “Code of Conduct” roundly celebrated by Mad King one week ago, which was clearly written by the Evil Gas Cartel’s legal team on their own letterhead:
Did Mad King not read it or is she so used to miners writing their own policies that it passed as normal? Who cares. She should be sacked forthwith.
Moreover, why address only the Code now? It has no legal force and will be gamed as assuredly as Chicken Chalmers lacks a spine. Changing it will change nothing.
This is all so outrageous that it is hard to know where to look.
The AFR is transformed into a mindless rentier foghorn. Mad King is corrupt or unbelievably stupid. Bovver Bowen is a blathering dill. And Chicken Chalmers is an A-grade poltroon.
Atop this craven gaggle sits the 150-pound wringing wet weakling, Anthony Albanese. A PM that has hardly set foot in the country in five months while his gutless minions send the Australian energy system to hell, dragging our poorest households down with it.
Albo from The Projects, my arse!
So, what is the national interest answer?
Installing a $7Gj price cap into the ADGSM proper is one possible solution. This will bring down power prices a lot, especially in TAS, VIC and SA, as well as help save manufacturers.
But, coal is a bigger power price driver in NSW and QLD. So, you really need to apply something similar to it.
The best approach is thus an export levy benchmarked to pre-Ukraine prices for both fuels. It will crash local prices and collect the enormous wartime profit windfall for Australia.
Finally, don’t consult the cartels on it. Just do it on Budget night and let the foreign, war-profiteering, fossil fuel f’wits squeal.
If you think this globe-destroying mob has community support then you are no pollie worthy of the name.
