For a government so intent on staying in power, versus making good policy, the neglect of energy markets has come to define it.
The great Alboflation of 2022/23 was mostly via energy costs. The government massaged its way out of that by plundering taxpayers to provide rebates to taxpayers, a classic bait and switch.
But those rebates were never sustainable. No energy taxes were levied to pay for them, despite the enormous cash windfall the Ukraine War parachuted onto the East Coast gas cartel.
Now we have come full circle. As the government removes the rebates, Australia is unique in the world to be enjoying the Ukraine War energy crisis for a second time.
Alas, it is not over. Despite electricity prices soaring by over 70% annualised for six months, there is another 20% to go from today’s prices.
Gas bills are also up a staggering 135% since Albo took power.
This energy market and fiscal mismanagement have derailed the RBA easing cycle as the energy price shock cascades through everything. Goldman.
The acceleration in headline inflation owed to an increase in goods inflation (+3.0%yoy) driven in part by a pick-up in the housing sub-group(+2.5%qoq).
Specifically, we note a 23.6% increase in electricity prices (as rebates were used up by households and annual price reviews flowed through to energy bills) and solid rise in home purchase costs – the largest single sub-component of the basket.
Property rates also surprised our expectations to the upside.
This is all energy-related, even the rates and taxes. That’s the problem with energy. It spills into everything.
Amusingly, Chris Minns thinks he has an answer.
Tracts of land around the proposed Narrabri gas field could be compulsorily acquired to get the $3.6 billion project moving NSW Premier Chris Minns has revealed, while delivering a full-throated defence of mining to his own union.
Mr Minns, speaking to a meeting of state delegates from the Australian Workers’ Union on Wednesday, said his plans to get Santos’ Narrabri gas project moving had been supercharged by news this week the operators of the Tomago aluminium smelter had begun talking to its workforce about potentially closing.
The Premier said the state has “offered (Tomago owners Rio Tinto) a significant financial support, as has the Commonwealth government”.
I might support this if Minns were going to nationalise the entire operation. But putting the taxpayer to work to support Santos, the prime mover of the gas cartel that is shipping so much gas offshore that it has sent local prices mad, is so stupid that I don’t know where to look.
Santos is going to respond by sending less gas from QLD to NSW and shipping it to China, leaving NSW in precisely the same spot on energy prices while it spews carcinogens pointlessly into the Great Artesian Basin.
There needs to be blanket gas reservation across trhe East Coast or these piecemeal efforts are pointless.
But at least we have virtue signalling to keep us warm.
All gas appliances will be outlawed in new buildings in the heart of Sydney in a little more than a year.
On Monday, the City of Sydney formally endorsed the ban on gas appliances on new homes and businesses.
As living standards crater with Albo’s popularity soaring, all of Australia has now caught Victoria disease.
Machetes coming to a suburb near you.
