Jacob Greber has a long tradition of being a businessomics commentator rather than an objective journalist, but he outdid himself yesterday with a bald-faced piece of propaganda for the gas cartel.
The piece represents objectivity, but it makes one crucial statement that renders it pure cartel guff.
At four minutes, Greber says that Peter Dutton campaigned on a gas reservation policy that “critically, would have hit existing contracts to foreign customers”.
He goes on to say that this was the opening that enabled Albo to review gas policies today.
This is complete crap.
Dutton’s proposal was to reserve exported spot gas for Australia, not contracted exports.
It would not have touched export contact volumes but would have reserved the excess to them for domestic use, which is also currently shipped ot Asia.
By doing so, Albo’s inability to agree with anything the Opposition says means Dutton and the ABC have shut down the only way to retrospectively reserve gas.
Spot LNG sales are already large.
And they are going to be huge.
And guess what? It is the price of spot gas that sets the marginal wholesale electricity price in Australia.
If Albo does not redirect these spot volumes, you will know the gas fix is in because there is no prospective reservation that will lower the price of gas or power.
Is it really too much to ask that Jacob Greber and the ABC get this one absolutely critical fact right in the gas debate?
Why did nobody call and ask?
