Just wow. A few days into the new year and the energy issue has erupted again with Canberra riven by corporate evil.
I give you the Dutton Opposition and energy treason:
Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien says Australian families and businesses will pick up the bill for the Albanese government’s gas price caps, dubbing the policy an “eleventh-hour, Frankenstein intervention”.
“It comes as no surprise that the energy market is faltering in response to the not-so invisible hand of Albanese whose hubris has him thinking his will can bend the rules of economics,” Mr O’Brien said.
“Industry experts echoed the Coalition’s concerns late last year that the Albanese Government’s market intervention would have severe unintended consequences, and this is what we’re now seeing.
More:
Nationals Leader David Littleproud says the wholesale price cap on gas is hurting everyday Australians, adding that the federal government must have forgotten the economic principle of demand and supply he learnt back in Year 8.
Mr Littleproud, speaking on Sky News, said the cost of living is being “directly affected” by the federal government’s decision to cap new contracts for wholesale gas at $12 a gigajoule for 12 months.
Littleproud’s propaganda is disgraceful. His Year 2 teacher taught him that abundant supply is useless if it is controlled by a cartel. You can bleat all you like about getting more gas, but the price won’t fall because competition is replaced by collusion.
Does the Murdoch press not realise that giving in to the gas cartel will destroy the Sun King’s Australian business? Inflation will run wild, the cash rate skyrocket, and an enormous wealth transfer from households to energy cartels raze his Aussie assets.
Take a pause for a moment to consider what would be happening to energy prices today if the Dutton Opposition supported price caps and marooned the gas cartel. It would be locked out of Canberra and there would no issue. It is the Dutton Opposition that is breathing life into cartel resistance.
This is a pure and literal gaslighting of the Australian people.
But should we be surprised? The Coalition has spent twenty years wrecking Australian energy.
- John Howard resisted all science on climate change, delaying and adding staggering cost to the transition.
- Tony Abbott lied mercilessly to the Australian public about the carbon price. In doing so, he convinced the public to give up on a decarbonisation regime that cost them nothing in favour of one that did nothing but cost them a bomb by paying polluters taxpayer funds.
- Malcolm Turnbull was white-anted by his own party for years to prevent it from putting forth any kind of decarbonisation policy while ceaselessly promoting fossil fuels.
- Scott Morrison turned climate change policy into a gas cartel boondoggle with huge public subsidies for projects that produced more expensive energy than the renewable alternatives that were displaced as a result.
There is no sicker record of energy policy vandalism anywhere. Not even in Borat’s monobrowed Kazakhstan will you find such a combination of corruption, stupidity, and political bastardry.
This sickness is so embedded that the Coalition can’t even see that its latest gambit on behalf of the cartel will intensify the outflow of support from blue ribbon seats to Teal challengers.
Meanwhile, the government is jawboning:
“Under the heads of agreement, those gas companies have committed to offering an extra 157 petajoules of supply to the east coast market in 2023, that’s almost three times the forecast shortfall. And the gas price cap is expected to put downward pressure on forecast price increases as these changes flow through to retail supply contracts, reducing those average price increases over time.
“Obviously this is no small thing, what we’re doing, we’ve never pretended otherwise. There is a temporary price cap, there is an ongoing regime, there is relief for households and small businesses. The alternative put forward by the Coalition is to do absolutely nothing and to leave whole industries and the community to fend for themselves.”
The government can trigger the ADGSM, which has not yet been used, if there is a gas supply shortfall forecast for Australia.
Pull the lever and prepare harsh export levies. Don’t repeat the dawdling of 2022. This is a war for economic survival as the power shock resumes:
Smash the cartel now!
