Back in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and Australia’s east coast gas export cartel was busily war-profiteering to the tune of $120bn, Treasurer Jim “Chicken” Chalmers led the Labor push to do nothing:
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 rest is history. Nothing was done to prevent local gas that is extracted at $1Gj from being sold for $70Gj, delivering Australia an energy and inflation shock we never had to have.
Since then, a procession of energy-intensive manufacturing has gone bust. We can no longer make plastics or, soon, explosives.
What Treasurer Jim “Chicken” Chalmers will replace these with is tax-subsidised and corrupt energy superidiot production:
Our agenda reflects the new economic orthodoxy of a churning and changing world. The legislative package we introduced this week puts our agenda into practice, to help make Australia a renewable energy superpower, and an indispensable part of the global net zero economy.
…The legislation is built on three pillars. First, a National Interest Framework will help us identify sectors where we have a sustained comparative advantage in the new net zero economy, or an economic resilience and security imperative to invest.
Second, a robust sector assessment process will help us better understand and break down barriers to private investment in key areas of the economy. And third, a set of Community Benefit Principles will ensure public investment and the private investment it generates lead to strong returns and stronger communities.
The three pillars will work together to help us build a more diversified and resilient economy powered by renewable energy. The framework helps determine our investment direction, the Treasury-led sector assessments will help us identify and address the barriers to attracting the private capital we need, and the principles will make sure the benefits flow to communities, workers and businesses around the country.
The treasurer is right. We do need national interest discipline. The problem is, he doesn’t have any.
Even today, all we need to do is break the east coast gas cartel with domestic reservation or export levies, and manufacturing growth will resume as energy prices crater and the energy transition is shoved back on track.
But Chalmers is afraid to do what is in the national interest.
So, instead, we will go through this ‘too late the hero’ dance of motherhood statements to serve as a smokescreen for what will happen: a scab grab of rent-seekers and corruption for $20bn.
Meanwhile, the extant manufacturing capacity for inputs into building anything for the “energy superpower” will continue to go out of business.
This is energy superidiot political crowding out, not industrial renewal.
