The gas cartel’s corrupt mouthpiece, the Grattan Institute, is facing more backlash over its idiotic gas ban taken up by an even more stupid Allan government.
Thousands of Victorian restaurants are threatening to close their doors for a day to protest the Allan government’s gas reforms, in strike action which would create chaos across the state and bleed up to $6m in taxes from the Victorian economy.
Australian Restaurant and Café Association (ARCA) chief executive Wes Lambert said the single-day shutdown would ensure the voices of those working in the sector — worth $60m a day — were heard.
A date for the mass shutdown has not yet been set, but it could occur anytime before the November 2026 election if hospitality organisations did not believe the government was willing to change its plans to make all new restaurants, cafes and bars fully electric, he said.
While the Allan government this week backed down on its unpopular plan to force Victorian homes off gas, all new commercial buildings — with the exception of industrial, manufacturing, and agricultural facilities — must be fully electric from January 1, 2027.
This plan was always nonsense; even according to Grattan’s own analysis, it will make virtually no difference to climate change mitigation.
Indeed, given how far behind Victoria’s energy transition is and how dependent it is on secretly channelled subsidies to brown coal generators to keep the lights on, banning gas at this juncture will only increase carbon emissions for decades.
Worse, the cost of the conversion is huge to businesses and punters alike. Then, on top, the high gas prices guarantee no savings from using electricity anyway, given gas-fired power sets the marginal wholesale electricity price.
Now it will ensure Victoria’s only competitive advantage, its food, can’t be cooked, either.
This is the policy brainfart of a think tank funded by the gas cartel. It is a fig leaf policy to stop anybody attacking the real source of gas emissions—the gas export industry!
Victoria should immediately declare a gas war on Australia and reserve all of its remaining Bass Strait volumes for state use.
This will wreck the East Coast economy overnight and force a constitutional crisis, demanding a national solution that is so obvious that desperately idiotic ideas like the gas ban are needed to cover it up.
Deploy Peter Dutton’s gas export levy solution to the gas cartel’s spot volumes, targeting a $7Gj price.
A large chunk of Australia’s energy problems will be resolved. Productivity, household incomes, and taxes will all rise.
A country unable to deliver a policy so basic to the national interest is lost
