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Protecting Corporate Mates, Not Consumers

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Why is the Albanese Labor government making it easier for their corporate mates with every piece of legislation?

This Bill – the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Australian Energy Regulator Separation) Bill 2025 – is another step toward letting powerful corporations, including foreign multinationals, continue to gouge Australians. By removing the regulator from the ACCC’s oversight, Labor is effectively hiding the energy market from competition and consumer protections.

This isn’t a market; it’s a bureaucratic racket designed to transfer wealth from hardworking Australians to parasitic billionaires under the cover of the “Net Zero” scam.

Worst of all, regulators will no longer be required to disclose their personal financial interests. This is a green light for cronyism.

We know over 80% of Australians are paying too much for electricity, yet Labor protects the profits of their wind and solar mates over the welfare of Australian families.

I will always put everyday Australians before corporations and will continue to fight for lower power bills for every Australian.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the over 300 community groups across Australia fighting the rollout of industrial-sized wind and solar projects — the so-called “renewable” energy projects. The only thing renewable about them is that they have to be replaced every 15 years.

Among the many Australians standing up across our country, I recognise:

  • Katy McCallum, Steven Nowakowski (what a man!), Grant Piper, and Emma Bowman.
  • Bill Stinson, Sandra Burke, Steven Tripp, Andrew Weidemann, and Katherine Meyers.

These people are for Australia, for the regions, and for every citizen.

I also recognise a list of true champions for Australia: Colin Boyce, Llew O’Brien, Ben Abbott, Alex O’Brien, Michaela Humble, Michelle Hunt, Lynette LaBlack, and Rafe Champion.

Finally, my thanks to:

  • Neil Kilion, Sasha McNaughton, Caroline Emms, Nikki Kelly, Alex Nichol, Martine Shepherd, and Scott Baxter.
  • The Bob Brown Foundation (thank you, Bob!), the IPA, Rainforest Reserves, and the Centre for Independent Studies.
  • Ben Beattie and Aidan Morrison, two giants of the energy sector.

Transcript

Why is the Albanese Labor government making it easier for their corporate mates with every piece of legislation? This bill before us, the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Australian Energy Regulator Separation) Bill 2025, will likely pass without a whimper. You won’t hear much about it from either side of politics. Yet it’s another step towards a handful of powerful corporations, including foreign-owned multinationals, continuing to gouge Australians at every turn. This legislation separates the Australian Energy Regulator to establish them as fully independent and separate. The Energy Regulator currently lives in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s house, the ACCC. The ACCC supplies staffing and resources to the Energy Regulator to help it discharge its functions. While the bill frames the ACCC’s oversight as a problem, having the competition regulator ultimately responsible for energy market oversight is a very good thing. 

Ending energy market oversight is terrible. The energy market so-called ‘market’ is one of the most prescriptive and rigid areas of bureaucratic government. It’s not a market; it’s a racket—a bureaucratic racket. The risk for corruption and monopolisation is extreme. The Australian Energy Market Operator, AEMO, operates our entire electricity grid. It sounds like a government agency, yet somehow it’s a private body. No-one’s allowed to lodge a freedom of information request with them. They don’t turn up to parliamentary hearings for Senate estimates. They hide from scrutiny. That’s the key word for net zero with this government and the previous Liberal-National government—’hide’; hide the cost, hide the lack of policy basis, hide the damage, hide the lack of a plan. 

Now look at the AEMO board. Employees of for-profit energy and transmission companies dominate the AEMO board. We’re supposed to just trust they’re effectively prescribing rules and directing billions of dollars in taxpayer money purely for the public good, not for energy company profits—bloody ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. This is setting up government as a vehicle for wealth transfer from us, the people, to parasites—parasites not working in Australia’s national interest, hurting Australia and hurting Australians. 

With this bill, the government is taking the Energy Regulator out of the competition regulator. The ACCC’s role in energy markets is in the context of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, which aims to—listen to this—’enhance the welfare of Australians through the promotion of competition and fair trading and provision of consumer protections’. That’s a great goal. Why would we want to make the Energy Regulator more independent of that and put it beyond scrutiny and put it in hiding? If we’re trying to figure out if that’s a good thing to do, the first question to ask should be this: are there any competition problems in the energy market? If the answer is yes, maybe the competition regulator should have final oversight, like it does right now. 

So let’s look at the ACCC’s work on the electricity market. The first shot across the bow was the ACCC’s 2017 preliminary report eight years ago. In that report, the ACCC said: 

The ACCC has published a preliminary report into the electricity market highlighting significant concerns about the operation of the National Electricity Market, which is leading to serious problems with affordability for consumers and businesses. 

What? That’s what they said eight years ago. The ACCC thought prices were ‘putting Australian businesses and consumers under unacceptable pressure’. Since then, prices have become much, much worse. One can only wonder why. Market participants harp on about pulling the Energy Regulator out of the competition regulator while the ACCC highlights ‘significant concerns’ about how energy corporations are actually acting, behaving.  

Another headline from the ACCC, in December 2024 in the Financial Review, said, ‘More than 80 per cent of Aussies paying too much for their electricity.’ There was another story in May this year, ‘”Super complaint” filed with ACCC over misleading energy plans’. I’ll quote it: ‘CHOICE’—that’s CHOICE magazine, the consumer group—’has sent its first-ever super complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the ACCC, over allegations that retailers in the Australian energy market have engaged in dodgy and misleading pricing tactics that leave customers paying $65 million more than they should.’ 

So, returning to our overall question, are there any competition issues in the energy market? Should the competition regulator be involved in monitoring every aspect of those issues? The answer to both is a resounding yes. 

The ACCC will wrap up its ongoing reports into the electricity market in August. After that, there’s a real risk that competition in the electricity market will continue to deteriorate and deteriorate and deteriorate even further. What will that mean? It will mean higher prices and poorer service for Australians. Less competition means bigger profits for Labor’s big corporate mates in the energy sector, who are often foreign owned multinationals or parasitic billionaires. That’s what this bill represents—wealth transferred to the wealthy; a step towards higher profits for multinational corporations who want to gouge Australians even more under the cover of the renewables scam. 

Indeed, under the new Australian Energy Regulator, workers will no longer be required to make disclosures of their personal interests, as everyone in the ACCC is obliged to. This is as good as a green light for everyone with a conflict of interest to get involved in the new Energy Regulator—and you, the government, are doing this. The risk of corruption, cronyism and favouritism will be so big it will make the director of the National Anti-Corruption Commission blush. The Albanese Labor government has long signalled its intention to put the profits of its corporate wind and solar mates above and beyond competition—and above Australian workers and above Australian families and above Australian small businesses and employers and above Australia. 

Why doesn’t today’s Labor realise that its official, registered name is the a-l-p—Australian Labor Party? It seems to have forgotten and ditched Australia. Why do they continue to ditch Australia? And there’s no ‘u’ in Labor, because the l-a-b-o-r party does not represent you. 

Upon coming to government in 2022, Labor almost immediately transferred the energy regulator part of the Competition and Consumer Act out of Treasury and away from the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Minister Bowen. Can you believe that? It happened—the fox guarding the henhouse; the fox destroying the energy sector and making it a racket for Labor’s private mates to gouge Australians. If there’s a battle between lower prices and profits for wind and solar, everyone in this chamber knows where Minister Chris Bowen’s loyalties lie. Can Australia trust that Minister Bowen will choose competition and lower prices over net zero and the profits of parasitic renewables grifter-billionaires? Absolutely not. Based on his behaviour to date, every day of the week Minister Bowen will choose the profits of these renewables scammers over Australians and over Australia. 

The net zero dream is that you’ll pay $8,000 for a home battery and $60,000 for an electric vehicle and the grid will pay you nothing to drain it overnight to stabilise their dodgy market, their racket. That’s called ‘consumer energy resources’ and ‘virtual power plants’. Without them, the net zero pipedream just collapses. 

Competition doesn’t even come into consideration. This corrupted state control and abuse of consumer rights is a built-in feature of the net zero scam from the Liberal-Nationals and the Labor-Greens—citizens directly paying 70 per cent of the cost of the transition to net zero. You pay; they control and they use. In other areas, some people reliably estimate taxpayers and electricity consumers are paying 100 per cent of the $1.9 trillion transition to the UN-World Economic Forum net zero. The ACCC would have a heart attack at the anticompetitive proposals being rushed into the energy racket. That’s the real reason this bill seeks to take the Australian Energy Regulator out of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Australians’ power bills will continue to go up, as will the profits of foreign multinational companies involved in the net zero scam. That’s where your money is going. One Nation believes consumers should come before corporations. Ditch the net zero scam and its anticompetitive nonsense—its racket. What proportion of solar and wind complexes do Labor mates and industry super funds own, I wonder? We know it started pretty high with Greg Combet as minister. Labor, stop looking after your mates who own the industrial wind and solar complexes and stop handing over to them billions from taxpayers and electricity consumers. Put Australians first and lower power bills. 

I now add two brief comments. Firstly, when states owned electricity generators, energy benefited from a key constitutional tenet that our founding fathers wisely built into our Commonwealth Constitution—competitive federalism, a marketplace in governance between the states. A marketplace in governance is vital for accountability, vital for states’ rights and vital for Australian sovereignty and independence. John Howard’s Liberal-National government destroyed this when it created the so-called national electricity market, which is really a central bureaucratic energy racket, destroying accountability and now lining it up for fleecing Australians to foreign multinationals. 

Secondly, I acknowledge over 300 community groups across Australia fighting the rollout of industrial sized wind and solar projects, so-called renewable energy projects. The only thing renewable about them is that they have to be replaced every 15 years. Among many Australians across our country, I recognise Katy McCallum, Steven Nowakowski—what a man!—Grant Piper, Emma Bowman, Bill Stinson, Sandra Burke, Steven Tripp, Andrew Weidemann and Katherine Meyers. These people are for Australia and for the regions and for every Australian. I also recognise Colin Boyce, Llew O’Brien, Ben Abbott, Alex O’Brien, Michaela Humble, Michelle Hunt, Lynette LaBlack and Rafe Champion. This is a list of champions for Australia. I also recognise Neil Kilion, Sasha McNaughton, Caroline Emms, Nikki Kelly, Alex Nichol, Martine Shepherd, Scott Baxter, the Bob Brown Foundation—thank you, Bob!—the IPA, Rainforest Reserves, the Centre for Independent Studies, and Ben Beattie and Aidan Morrison, two giants of the energy sector. 

I recognise every person involved in exposing the horrific damage from industrial solar panels and industrial wind turbines, from the growing spaghetti network of high-voltage transmission lines carpeting regional Australia, from the big battery energy storage systems and from hideous, uneconomic, exploitative, environmentally damaging pumped hydro, destroying the fabric of our nation, white-anting the five pillars of our Australian community, our society: productive farmland, the source of our food; rural landscapes; wildlife habitats, our precious natural environment being torn apart by solar and wind and transmission lines; our communities; and our Australian way of life. 

To everyone involved, I say thank you. From Lakeland on Cape York to Chalumbin in North Queensland to Central Queensland, Wide Bay and Burnett, southern Queensland, New South Wales Central West, northern New South Wales, southern New South Wales, coastal New South Wales, across Victoria, Tasmania’s Robbins Island and so many more across our wide, beautiful regional Australia, I continue my admiration and continue to pledge my support for your honesty and integrity, your courage, your embracing of accurate data and your informed commitment to putting Australia and Australians first. Thank you very much. We support you as you continue your battle. 

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Your Battery, Their Grid: Read the Fine Print

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I moved a motion in the Senate to refer the issue of electricity smart meters to the Economics References Committee for inquiry. Why? Because Australians are being misled and left vulnerable.

The rollout of smart meters was promised as “voluntary”, yet it has now been made mandatory by this Labor government. These devices allow power companies—and governments—to monitor and control your electricity use. Worse still, energy companies can switch you to other tariffs without your consent. That means higher bills and less control over your own home.

Smart meters were sold as a way to help households save money, yet the reality is very different. Complaints have skyrocketed about unexplained tariff changes and complex pricing schemes that punish everyday Australians. And now, with Labor’s household battery scheme tied to “virtual” power plants, there’s nothing stopping your battery—paid for by you—being drained whenever the grid operator decides in the future.

This is not about helping consumers; it’s about control. It’s about protecting an unstable grid caused by the rush to unreliable solar and wind, at your expense.

One Nation stands with Australians against greedy power companies and foreign multinationals. We want transparency, accountability, and real consumer protections. We want to know what Labor is hiding. This inquiry is about giving power back to the people—literally.

The Vote

Transcript

I move: 

That the following matter be referred to the Economics References Committee for inquiry and report by 1 April 2026: 

The state of consumer protections in relation to electricity ‘smart meters’, with specific reference to: 

  • consumer rights to opt out from smart meter installation; 
  • ‘surge’, ‘cost-reflective power’ or ‘flexible’ tariffs and their impacts on household power bills; 
  • the Australian Electricity Market Commission rule change allowing electricity companies to change customers onto a punitive power tariff without their consent after two years; and 
  • any related matters. 

Three years ago, One Nation told the country: 

Australia is firmly on the path towards a dystopian future with households having their access to electricity taken out of their hands and monitored, controlled and restricted by governments. 

That’s control of your electricity use in the government’s hands and in energy company hands, including foreign multinational companies. That is control of your electricity and your access to it—whether you can use it and what you can use it for. This is only possible with the now mandatory rollout of smart meters, which are internet connected electricity meters. 

For many years, the rollout of smart meters was promised as purely voluntary. The experience of people who voluntarily got a smart meter was absolutely terrible. Daniel Mercer from the ABC reported in April that the New South Wales energy watchdog had sounded the alarm, saying too many consumers were being hit with poor service and left worse off from the smart meter rollout. He wrote: 

The watchdog said there had also been a major increase in the number of complaints related to sudden, unexplained changes to people’s electricity tariffs. 

There were changes to their tariffs with no consent. He continued: 

Such changes often involved customers being switched from flat rate prices, where they paid the same rate for a unit of power no matter when they bought it, to complex and dynamic charges. 

Among these were time-of-use tariffs, in which customers paid more for power at peak times, and demand charges, which involved charging someone based on their single biggest half-hour of use across an entire month. 

So, if you used a higher level of power for just half an hour, that put you onto a higher rate that was across all your electricity use for the entire month. He went on: 

“The smart meter rollout aimed to increase flexibility and customer engagement with the energy market, by allowing customers to manage their energy usage and save money,” Ms Young— 

the New South Wales Energy and Water Ombudsman— 

said. 

“But we aren’t seeing evidence of this in complaints that come to [the ombudsman], in fact, we are seeing the opposite.” 

What was the Albanese Labor government’s response to all of these problems? Did they try to fix them? No. They doubled down. The Labor government in June made the smart meter rollout mandatory. This federal Labor government made the smart meter rollout mandatory. They said anyone going onto a smart meter couldn’t be put onto a punitive tariff. They did say that. This, though, is only temporary relief that will last just two years. After that, it’s open season for power company profiteering. The smart meters are a key part of the government’s emergency plans. 

Think about why they need emergency plans. The energy minister, Chris Bowen, is spruiking his household battery scheme. What he isn’t telling Australians about is the fine print. To receive the government’s subsidy for a household battery, your battery must be ‘capable of participating in a virtual power plant’—virtual power plant; this gets more and more crazy. A virtual power plant, or VPP, is simply about being able to drain your battery, which you paid for, to the grid whenever your power company wants. Combined with an always connected smart meter, there’s nothing stopping the grid operator from draining a household battery whenever they want in the future—whenever they want—disregarding your need for electricity. By the way, you, the householder, pay for the battery. Home batteries—why are they needed? They’re needed to ensure stability—the stability of electricity supply. Solar and wind are inherently asynchronous, making them unstable. Coal, hydro, nuclear and gas are all synchronous; they’re stable, reliable, secure. 

As the proportion of electricity from solar and wind increases, the grid becomes unstable. This is fact. It has happened overseas; it has happened here. As the grid becomes more unstable, the ability to reach into Australians’ homes to take over their batteries will be too tempting for you lot, the government. It will be essential, in order to protect our grid, to reach in and control your battery, drain your battery, which you paid for. It will be essential to protect the grid from their onslaught of solar and wind asynchronous generation. The government won’t be able to resist. We already have the data to prove it. Last year, Queensland’s state owned power grid throttled almost 170,000 air conditioners six times in just two months. I’ll say that again: last year, Queensland’s state government owned power grid throttled back almost 170,000 air conditioners six times in just two months, under a scheme called PeakSmart, to try and protect the grid as it buckled under the net zero transition. Under the PeakSmart scheme—that’s a good name, isn’t it?—users were not even told their air conditioners were being throttled. They were not even told. I have, since the start, been aware of these meters being considered, because the so-called energy transition is really an energy reduction, an energy restriction, an energy control. The objective is control. I’ve been saying this since 2016. The objective is control—furtive, unexplained control of your access to electricity; furtive, unexplained, unaccountable control of your access to electricity. So much for transparency under you lot in the Albanese Labor government. 

That’s why One Nation is moving this motion to have an inquiry into the rollout of smart meters and what consumer protections are needed. Right now, there are no consumer protections—none at all—and the public has been misled. Deceitfully, the truth is hidden. Why would they hide it? Because they’re out to get you, to screw you. What protections are actually in place to make sure power companies aren’t going to gouge Australians through a smart meter? Right now, it looks like nothing. The smart meter rollout was changed from voluntary to mandatory without any notice despite the many problems that had been raised and pointed out. Australians pointed out the many problems to the government: Why? Who benefits? It’s certainly not everyday Australians, who this Labor government dishonestly pretends to serve. Instead, it’s stealing. One Nation wants this inquiry to answer these questions and many more. 

When it comes to Australians battling greedy power companies, including foreign multinationals, One Nation backs Australians every day of the week. We back you, Australians. I encourage the Senate to send the issue of smart meters to an enquiry and to back Australian consumers being protected from greedy power companies, including foreign multinationals in charge of vital parts of our essential infrastructure. Our electricity grid is arguably the most important infrastructure in our country. Will the government oppose this reference for a Senate committee inquiry and continue to hide the truth from Australians? Or will it be open? Will you be open, transparent and honest with the Australian people 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Hodgins-May): There are no further speakers. The question is that the motion put by Senator Roberts be agreed to. A division is required. We will defer that division to tomorrow. 

Debate adjourned. 

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Labor’s Cost-of-Living Crisis Is Bleeding Aussies Dry

Milk’s up. Eggs? Up. Lights on? Might cost a kidney! Coffee’s $6. A sandwich? $50.

It’s not one big hit — it’s death by a thousand dollars.

Labor’s cost-of-living crisis is eating Aussie life, one small joy at a time.

Transcript

The price of milk is going up, The price of eggs is going up. The cost of freight is going up. Turning the lights on means selling a kidney on the black market. Everything’s expensive.

Want a Uber Eats sandwich these days? Well, there’s 50 bucks. A quick coffee to warm you up from whatever mini Ice Age we’re shivering in right now – there’s 6 bucks. It all adds up.

Now I like coffee, some days 2. $12.00 in coffee to stay alive. That’s $4,368 in coffee in a year.

Little things add up. 10 years ago it cost $1456 a year in coffee, the odd dollar here and there.

That’s what this cost of living crisis is built on. It’s eating away at the things Australians used to enjoy – one by one.

Even heading down to the pub with your mates for a couple of beers is a luxury expense.

I heard tolls were going up across Sydney – again! Drive across the bridge or have an extra cup of coffee? Turn the lights on or skip lunch? Use the air conditioning? Plug in an electric car to charge?

Are you crazy?

Every Labor tax hike, every bit of kindness to fund Treasurer Jim Chalmers latest thought bubble, every cent squeezed out of you adds up to a personal crisis.

So when we buy our eggs, we buy our milk, we take a detour to avoid a toll or walk past that coffee we can’t afford? Remember Labor’s greed added those costs. One man – $1.00 at a time.

The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, with a little help of course from Chris Brown and his mad, elusive cheap energy.

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Empowering Remote Australia

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I travelled to Alice Springs to talk about actually supporting Australians in remote communities, not dividing us on race like the PM tried to do with his voice referendum.

One Nation will abolish the racially divisive indigenous departments that costs tens of billions a year and hasn’t closed the gap one bit.

Here’s what we’ll do instead.

The Northern Rail link is a 3,000 km proposal across the entire top of Australia.

The important part for remote communities is what will run right next door to that rail line: high speed internet, electricity and a water pipeline.

Those three essential utilities will allow us to turbocharge central Australia, for everyone who lives remotely.

Instead of handouts – One Nation will build real infrastructure that will allow remote Australia to make themselves richer. The best form of welfare is a job – we’ll build the infrastructure to create those jobs in rural Australia, based on need not race.

Real wealth for the future, of all Australians.

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Renewable Energy: Land Use and Cost Concerns

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Coal-fired power stations and nuclear power stations each have about 40 hectares of footprint, with a very narrow target transmission lines straight to the cities. In contrast, solar and wind installations are scattered and located away from the main cities, taking up enormous amounts of space. Their energy density is very low, requiring a vast amount of land to produce the same power, and they aren’t on consistently. This increases transmission costs and the amount of land that regions must devote to solar, wind, and now batteries, causing significant angst.

Around the world, every country that has increased the proportion of solar and wind has also increased the cost of electricity for consumers and destroyed their manufacturing base. For example, look at Germany.

A surface coalmine must pay a bond for every hectare uncovered each year, and if it is rehabilitated properly to a superior standard than it was originally, they get their money back. However, there is no such bond for solar and wind companies to set aside funds for decommissioning their complexes at the end of their life. This needs to change!

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing again. Your predecessor said, ‘Australia’s random renewable energy push needs to be overhauled and a nationwide stocktake is required to determine what should be built and where it should go.’ Are you committed to that overall overhaul?

Mr Sheldon: That is an observation or recommendation made by Mr Dyer, and I think that’s been built into the review that Mr Duggan has just been talking about. So all those action plans and so on are designed to
ensure—

Senator ROBERTS: When’s that coming out? I’m sorry, I missed it.

Mr Duggan: The action plan has been agreed by the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council, so that’s now a public document. So we’re in the process now of implementing. The full response to the review was
published on 19 July.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. So that’s been included in their recommendations?

Mr Duggan: Yes, that’s right.

Senator ROBERTS: Mr Dyer also said, ‘The sort of granular planning required for a once in a generation transformation to secure the nation’s energy supply still had not happened.’ Is that now in the report as well—
granular planning?

Mr Duggan: Yes, this was a recommendation to governments. As you would know, a lot of the detail, the specific planning around land use and specific locations of related transmission, sits with the state governments
and involves a very big input from the local governments. So a lot of the argumentation around that recommendation was to point to some of the best practice that already exists and to encourage that to be taken up
by the other states and territories.

Senator ROBERTS: There’s a lot of pain in the regions now, because they’re bearing the brunt of solar and wind disturbances.

Mr Duggan: What the report highlighted was that, certainly where best practice is not happening, there was an opportunity to improve the way projects are being delivered to the betterment of communities. That’s
absolutely correct.

Senator ROBERTS: It seems like it’s hell for leather, just do whatever you want. And there’s a lot of cash flying around, which is inducing councils to bypass some of their own ordinances, as we understand it.

Senator Ayres: Senator Roberts, the government inherited the last government’s framework and commissioned Mr Dyer to do this report because it’s in the interests of rural and regional communities and of an
effective rollout of generation and transmission capability that we improve the governance and consultation processes and all of the things that are included in Mr Dyer’s report. That’s what’s motivated the government to commission this report. On those nine recommendations, I think Mr Duggan said three of them are directed towards the Commonwealth, because there are multiple participants in this process, but they have, essentially, all been adopted. It’s our job now to operationalise that effectively in a way that addresses, I think, many of the issues that you raise.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for that, Minister. Are you aware that a coal-fired power station and a nuclear power station have about 40 hectares of footprint, and that’s it, and a very narrow target transmission
corridor straight to the main users, which are the cities and the provincial cities? Solar and wind are scattered and away from the main cities and they take up enormous room. Their energy density is very low, which means that you need an enormous amount of land to produce the same power. And even then you can’t produce it regularly. So that increases transmission costs, and the amount of land the regions are devoting to solar, wind and transmission, and also now to batteries. It’s causing a lot of angst. Are you aware of that?

Senator Ayres: I’m certainly aware, on one hand, that, with the processes for approval and consultation with these projects, we were operating with the last government’s processes, and we are working to improve those. I’m also aware that you’re trying to make a broader point, I guess, about the merit or otherwise of the approach that is being taken by the government and the states and Commonwealth in terms of building an energy system for the future. I appreciate that you’re not one of the coalition MPs here, but I think it’s hard to make an argument about community consultation on one hand, and then do a press release that says: ‘We’re going to turn up with seven nuclear reactors in your neighbourhood, whether you like it or not. We’re not going to tell you how much they cost, or how many of them we’re going to build—but, Muswellbrook, here you go, whether you like it or not, a nuclear reactor’—

Senator ROBERTS: I agree with you. A coal-fired power station would be fine—

Senator Ayres: That will be very expensive. What we know, and I think the evidence that you’ve heard today shows—and I understand you don’t agree with it; I think you’ve demonstrated over time that you are impervious to the facts and evidence that are provided by the agencies—

Senator ROBERTS: I do the contrary, Minister. I love evidence.

Senator Ayres: That’s your right, I understand that. But the shift to the cheapest form of energy is what the government is interested in here. Claims are made—some of them very wild claims, and some of them
somewhere between misinformation and disinformation—about the scale of land that is required for these projects. I understand that people make those claims and some people retweet them and repost them—pretty
irresponsible in my view. But we have commissioned the Dyer report for a reason; that is, to improve the processes. The minister believes, and the government believes, that adopting those, together with the appointment of Mr Mahar and other steps that the government is undertaking, will improve the effectiveness of the consultation process as we get on with one of the most important nation building things that government can do, and that is to deliver the lowest cost, most reliable energy system as we upgrade our energy system so that we can have manufacturing jobs and low cost, reliable, renewable energy and storage for households and business into the future. It’s a decades-long pathway and we’re determined to do it in the most efficient way possible for the Australian people.

Senator ROBERTS: There are two things I would remind you of, Minister. One is that the energy density drives the cost, and physics does not change the very low energy density of solar and wind, whereas coal and
especially nuclear are very high energy density. The second thing is that, everywhere around the world, every country that has increased the proportion of solar wind, has increased the cost of electricity for consumers and destroyed their manufacturing base. Have a look at Germany. Something that Mr Dyer was very passionate about was rehabilitation bonds, so that these wind and solar companies have put money away for decommissioning the complexes at the end of life. A surface coalmine has to pay a bond for every hectare uncovered each year, and then, at the end of the life of the mine, if it’s rehabilitated properly, to a superior standard than it was originally, they get their money back. There is no bond for solar and wind. What work have you done on putting reforms to government that would ensure there is money put away to clean up the environment, not just leave a toxic wasteland? Specifically, what have you done with the government?

Mr Sheldon: Can I just clarify that question? Is it: what work has the AEIC done to raise that issue with government?

Senator ROBERTS: Yes.

Mr Sheldon: I think Mr Dyer raised that. It was in his annual report in 2022 that he raised this issue about performance bonds in relation to wind farms in particular.

Senator ROBERTS: And what work has been done in following up?

Mr Sheldon: It’s certainly one of those issues that does get raised with us. It’s not in the top 10 or so issues that are raised with us in the complaints that we receive. We’re like a small ombudsman. We receive complaints. It’s an issue that does get raised. During the time that I’ve been in the role, from 2 April this year, it has been raised a few times, but it’s certainly not the top issue. In terms of what is happening, I think since 2022, when Mr Dyer raised the issue, what I’ve observed in the time that I’ve been in the role is that, in different jurisdictions, there’s certainly work done to increase transparency. One of our roles, I guess, in the AEIC is to promote more transparency around these projects.

Senator ROBERTS: What, specifically, have you done?

Mr Sheldon: It’s not our role to implement policy. We’ve identified issues and we certainly monitor them. New South Wales, for example, has recently worked on its renewable energy plan, which includes standard
clauses and so on around the landholders in relation to this sort of issue. We’re monitoring that, but we don’t have responsibility for implementing it, as a complaint handling body. If we identify good examples, we’ll identify them as part of our role.

Senator ROBERTS: So what are you doing, specifically, to make sure that the bonds come into place?

Mr Sheldon: We don’t have a role to implement putting that in place. It’s certainly something we can raise as an issue. We have a range of mechanisms to do that. One of them is the annual report, which, obviously, comes out every year, on a calendar year basis. And part of what’s always been appended to that annual report is a series of observations that have really been built on the observations of the commissioner over many years—which is where the observation was made in 2022. That’s a place where we can raise that with officials that do have policy responsibility for these sorts of matters. That’s generally how we do it. We also have a website where we would raise things. We have reporting obligations to the minister. So, if we identify an issue, we obviously include that in our observations or reports.

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, can I ask if you have much more to go? We’re running terribly behind.

Senator ROBERTS: I just want to make a comment to the minister. Minister, this is a comment, but there’s no reflection on the people at the table with you right now, because they’re interim—well, you’re not in interim,
but Mr Dyer was a thorough professional—

Senator Ayres: We’re all interim in one sense or another, Senator Roberts.

Senator ROBERTS: Mr Dyer was a thorough professional, who did his job extremely well. We happily endorsed him in Senate estimates. He was effectively an ombudsman, and a very good one.

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Australians Deserves Better: Use Our Resources for a Prosperous Future

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Australia can easily be the richest country on earth with the resources we have. Instead, we’re being told to turn off air-cons and dishwashers because there’s not enough electricity. This is only possible because the people in charge hate you. There’s no other explanation for a country that sits on thousands of years of energy supply to be in the situation Australia is.

One Nation will put Australians first, and will fight for a wealthy, prosperous Australia.

Transcript

The Greens are continuing their war on natural gas, their war on humanity. Gas keeps the lights on when their wind turbines and solar panels aren’t working, and that’s often. This afternoon, New South Wales is facing blackouts, as wind and solar supplied less than a quarter of energy needs. They’re facing blackouts! 

With the abundance of coal, oil and natural gas under our feet, Australia is an energy superpower. Hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas—are the energy miracles, the human development miracles, the human progress miracles. Australia is among the top three gas exporters and the top two coal exporters. We are the largest exporter of energy in the world. Now, though, Australia is facing blackouts and energy rationing like we’re a Third World country. Thank you! 

The New South Wales government has asked households to turn off their air-conditioners, pull the blinds down, turn off the dishwashers and turn off the lights this afternoon. Third World—thank you! Next they’ll probably ask everyone to just curl up in the fetal position on the floor. The anti-human greenies are winning. Coal is being shut down, as they want, and this is the result: east coast Australians suffer. You’re not going to believe the Greens’ brilliant solution to this. Just wait for it. They want to ban gas. Your gas stovetop and hot-water heater are going to be forcibly converted to electric, and you’ll be banned from turning them on when wind and solar don’t give the grid enough power. You can’t make this up! 

Think about this: electricity prices are at record highs thanks to solar and wind. They’re three times what they used to be—trebled. Now we’re having less electricity, because we’re relying on solar and wind more, and we’re having increased demand, because we’re switching from gas to electricity. What will that do to prices? You can’t make this up. I guess you don’t need to turn your dishwasher on anyway, if you can’t turn on your electric cooktop to cook dinner. This is the green dream: no gas, no light, no cooking, no red meat, no fun. 

It’s the hypocrisy that’s the worst part, though. The Greens want to ban us using coal here, yet it’s perfectly fine to ship coal over to China. China uses that coal to make wind turbines and solar panels, and our dopey government buys them back off China. We subsidise the Chinese to do it. We subsidise the Chinese to install them and we subsidise the Chinese and other parasitic billionaires and corporations to run them. Who pays for those subsidies? The people who use electricity do. The Greens are fine with that. Buying coal products from China—solar and wind turbines—is fine, but using coal here is not. One Nation says: unleash the resources we have in our country for the benefit of all Australian people. Talk to Queenslanders about the services and infrastructure being built from coal royalties. 

China gives token signals about solar and wind, while using coal, nuclear and hydro. China produces 4.5 billion tonnes of coal a year, heading for five billion. They’re the world’s largest producer by a long way. Australia produces 560 million tonnes, and a lot of our coal is exported. Some of it goes to China, because they can’t get enough with their 4.5 billion. India produces around 1.4 billion tonnes of coal—three times what we produce—and buys more from Australia. Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s because they want what we have: a developed nation, with people living longer, safer, easier, more secure, more prosperous and more comfortable lives. They know the secret to these is affordable hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas. Britain started its climb to development using coal. America continued using coal and added the benefit of using oil and gas. High energy density fuels released us from using animals as beasts of burden, stopped us using slaves and reduced exposure to harsh work conditions and work environments. 

Why are hydrocarbon fuels—so powerful, so effective and lifting us to higher standards of living—repeatedly proven around the world? I’ll tell you why: high energy density, which lowers unit energy costs—more energy, lower costs. That gives us productivity. That’s why coal, oil and natural gas are so important. The largest component of manufacturing costs today is electricity. We are now uncompetitive because our electricity costs are amongst the highest. That hurts jobs. The Greens are antijobs, antidevelopment, anticivilisation and antihuman. Only One Nation will end net zero and pull us out of the UN Paris Agreement to restore affordable secure energy. 

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Electrification Overhaul: The Costly Future of Australia’s Energy Strategy

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Electrification is an essential component of the Albanese government’s net zero strategy. It involves turning every device that consumes energy to electric: replacing petrol cars with electric vehicles, swapping gas cook tops for electric ones, removing gas hot-water systems in favour of electric, and even making barbecues electric. Everyday Australians will bear the costs of this insanity. To me, it’s unwise to place all our eggs in the electricity basket when we are reimagining our grid to depend entirely on weather-dependent generation. Yet, to the government, such heresy is “disinformation.”

Achieving electrification will require a massive upgrade to our electricity transmission network to meet the higher demand, especially from electric vehicles. However, even this alone will not achieve electrification, as there just isn’t enough generation capacity from wind and solar to ever meet the heightened demand. Consequently, the government is pursuing companion strategies.

First, people will be incentivised to purchase wall batteries to go with their rooftop solar systems, which will connect to the grid. To manage evening and morning peak demand, the government plans to draw power from these batteries, restricting users from operating power-intensive appliances like air conditioners and pool pumps.

If you have an EV, this strategy means the power stored in your wall battery—intended for overnight charging—will also be taken. There’s even a plan to plug EVs directly into the grid to draw any charge you may have managed to store in your battery if required to keep the grid working.

This won’t be enough on its own, so the government has introduced a new building code mandatory for new homes, which will add about $50,000 to construction costs. These changes include completely sealing homes to keep heat out, which may lead to moisture build up and mould.

Ceiling fans will replace air-conditioners, while rooms and homes will become smaller, ceilings lower and spaces more compact, with no garages and narrower streets, as people will not have cars.

Welcome to your future under electrification. Watch the video for more on this madness.

Transcript

Electrification is an essential part of the Albanese government’s net zero strategy. Electrification consists of taking every device that consumes energy and making it electric: petrol cars replaced with electric cars; gas cooktops replaced with electric ones; gas hot-water systems ripped out and replaced with electric; barbecues only electric—which is no fun at all. Everyday Australians pay the cost. 

To me, it’s unwise to put all our eggs in the electricity basket when we are reimagining our electricity grid to rely entirely on weather-dependent generation. To the government, of course, such heresy is mere ‘disinformation’. I’m sure Minister Bowen is champing at the bit to declare any online critics of net zero as threatening the environment, leading to a ban on ‘disinformation’. 

The truth is that electrification is something we must debate. There are real risks to the public, and the price tag is astronomical. So let’s start with safety. The internet is reporting that China has banned electric vehicles from underground car parks, following a Daily Telegraph story on the weekend. The inference is that the ban was from the government, when in fact the Telegraph made clear the ban was from car-park owners and from apartments above the car parks. It’s businesses acting to protect themselves and their customers. Local news reports that property owners were spurred into action after 11 intense battery fires in Hangzhou. The reports have revived fears in China that the new low-carbon-dioxide technology is more trouble than it’s worth. Definitely—yes, it is. One viral social media post involved a Hangzhou car showroom catching fire after a display car spontaneously combusted. It was a brand-new vehicle. There was no issue of faulty maintenance or handling. As has been correctly reported, the science is clear: ‘when EV batteries do overheat, they’re susceptible to something called thermal runaway,’ says Edith Cowan University academic Muhammad Zhar. This article goes on to say: 

That’s when physical damage— 

or a manufacturing fault— 

triggers a chemical chain reaction within the battery. 

It can be a short circuit. It can be a puncture. Or an external heat. 

Such damage can lead to a high-temperature fire or toxic gas explosion. 

“About 95 per cent of battery fires are classed as ignition fires, which produce jet-like directional flames. The other 5 per cent involve a vapour cloud explosion.” 

That was written by Edith Cowan University academic Muhammad Azhar. 

Recently, five cars were destroyed when a damaged battery fell from an EV parked at Sydney airport. A Tesla went up in flames on the road after contacting debris that fell from a truck near Goulburn. No ways have been developed of smothering a lithium-ion fire. The safest place for an EV is in the open air, where any fire can be contained until it burns out without destroying the property of others in the process. 

Secondly, when it comes to electrification, the elephant in the room is cost. The process consists of rebuilding the national electricity grid, generation and transmission. Energex and Powerlink have identified emerging limitations in the electricity networks supplying the Brisbane CBD. The power grids in Brisbane and across Australia were not built for our modern population density and certainly weren’t built to take the full load of energy that’s now required to electrify houses, cars and businesses. They note corrective action is required to avoid network overload and to avoid load shedding—known as ‘brownout’—which is when the power is selectively switched off to houses and businesses to prevent a wider blackout. Smart meters will make brownouts easier, providing the ability for power companies to remotely turn off air-conditioners and power to living areas, leaving the kitchen circuit functioning to keep the fridge on. New houses are being built with that circuit arrangement. It’s control. 

The cost to rewire the grid to convey solar, wind and pumped hydro from the point of generation to the cities and then rewire the city and suburban grid for the higher electricity demand has not been costed. I have asked the minister repeatedly in the last few weeks for those costings, and it is clear that none exist. Let me help the government. Visual Capitalist consultancy has done independent costings showing that the cost of rewiring the grid and adding firming—back-up batteries and pumped hydro—is about 30 per cent of the overall electrification cost, or $300 billion, on the consensus figure of Australia’s $1 trillion cost—which I think is about half of it. 

In the electrification agenda, cost concerns relate to the national building code. The idea is to avoid having to rewire at least parts of the grid through lowering household electricity usage to make room for charging EVs in the existing power grid. The targeted production is 50 per cent less power—half of what you’re using. Remember that Australians are already using 10 per cent less power than five years ago. The Australian Building Codes Board has a rating system called NatHERS which rates housing standards from one star to 10 stars. The current code requires seven stars. The code includes a measure of whole-of-house energy efficiency, which rates your home compliance with a net zero ideology, including heating and cooling, hot water systems, lighting, pool and spa pumps, cooking and even plug-in appliances. Our Big Brother is poking their nose into every aspect of your home in the name of saving the environment. 

The actual building code component of the building code calls for the sealing of homes to prevent outside air coming in. This creates issues with condensation, meaning mould, which other aspects of the code may alleviate—may. Clearly nobody involved in this new code has lived in a Queenslander-style home that relies on airflow to keep the house cool. The new ideology-driven code will add $50,000 to the cost of construction of a new home, partially offset through lower electricity costs. The reduction in electricity costs will not be a lot because your energy bill is composed mainly of a fee for poles and wires, margin fees and admin fees, not electricity usage. As I have explained, the poles and wires charge is going higher than Elon Musk’s spaceship. 

The cost of the new code to everyday Australians will be massive. We have 11 million homes in Australia and, so far, only recently built inner-city apartments meet the code. A quick calculation: $50,000 per home times 10 million homes is a $500 billion theoretical cost. Not all homes will be done. Many will just be bulldozed and replaced with tiny apartments to house Labor’s new arrivals. Economies of scale may result. Yet the actual cost of building upgrades is expected to be 15 per cent of the transition cost. With a transition cost of $1 trillion, that’s building upgrades costing $150 billion. On the more likely $2 trillion transition cost, building upgrades will cost $300 billion. That’s money everyday Australians will have to pay or will lose when they sell a non-compliant property for a reduced price. In all the time I have heard net zero debated, the shocking cost of converting buildings has never been mentioned 

And wait; there’s more! Converting transport—trucks, shipping and aviation—is not mentioned. It’s another seven per cent—$70 billion. Eight per cent of the cost is made up of hydrogen development, carbon dioxide scrubbing and industry conversion costs. Add another $80 billion. The cost of new generation to replace affordable and reliable coal power with weather-dependent solar and wind fairytale power is the remaining 40 per cent, or $400 billion. Remember, we already have this coal generation. Electrification requires us to shut down the generation we already have and build it over again in solar and wind. The problem climate change carpetbaggers are now running into is simply this: the best places for these things have been taken. New installations are going further out, requiring higher transmission costs and higher maintenance costs. Residents are starting to see the environmental damage caused to our native forest and animals, and to farmland. The resistance has started. 

Let’s not forget wind and solar last for, at best, 15 years and then have to be replaced again and again and again. This means that every single industrial wind and solar installation will need to be replaced at least once before 2060, and more likely twice. The replacement process will be never-ending. Every 15 years the whole lot gets replaced again and again and again. The transmission network will require constant maintenance. Having added an additional 10,000 kilometres of poles and wires, the extra maintenance costs will remain in electricity bills forever. The truth is the public will never finish paying for net zero electrification. 

The good people over at Visual Capitalist have given calculating the cost of net zero a fair crack based on data on US National Public Utilities Council. Their total cost to electrify Western countries before 2060 is US$110 trillion. Insane! Australia’s share of that is currently estimated at $1 trillion; however, looking through the US data, which is more advanced than ours, a cost as high as $2 trillion is much more likely. 

The costings I’ve presented tonight are not firm. I hope they encourage the government to come clean with the costings they have to allow for an open, mature debate—one which asks: is it time to walk away and try something else? Like emission-free coal, for example. For a fraction of this money, we can simply retrofit coal plants with new technology that captures and converts carbon dioxide to useful products like fertiliser. Or stop collecting this because carbon dioxide is beneficial. For some reason, the government doesn’t want to talk about new coal plants. Hmmm; I wonder where that list of ALP donations is again? I suggest journalists go looking. 

This energy fairytale is going to cost so much money it’s never going to happen. Australia can’t afford it. How can Australians who are struggling with the cost of living under Labor afford trillions for electrification? The further we get into this, the more stupid and the more dishonest the idea looks. Ideology-driven bureaucrats, politicians, academics and journalists have put us on a path to ruin. Climate change carpetbaggers will be this country’s death. The rorting, the boondoggles and the waste of taxpayer money is just getting started. One Nation will end the net zero electrification scam and make Australia affordable again. Net zero is a scam, and One Nation is the only party that will stop it. 

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Smart Meters … It’s No Longer a Conspiracy Theory!

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Smart Meters cutting off your power is no longer a conspiracy theory. It’s already here! The Queensland Government reached into people’s homes to take control of 170,000 air-cons in the last two months.

Wind, solar and the demonisation of coal is destroying our once reliable power supply, turning Australia into a third world country, despite our vast natural resources.

Only One Nation will stop the Net Zero insanity and bring back cheap power bills.

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The cost of living keeps getting worse

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Feel like the grocery and fuel bill has gone up? Working just as hard and feel like you’re going backwards?

It’s because you are. The major parties are the cause.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak to this matter of public importance—and it is a crucial and real matter of public importance. Well may a former assistant minister in the previous government debate the cost of living. This cost-of-living crisis now facing everyday Australian families and small businesses rests on the shoulders of both sides of this chamber. For more than two years, the Liberal and National government and the then Labor Party opposition were on a unity ticket to conjure money through electronic ledger entries and spend for short-term electoral benefit. They conjured up $500 billion and spent it on recurring government expenditure. These turned out to be handouts to Liberal, Labor and National party sponsors. Much of it went into corporate profits, not job support. Now we have runaway inflation. Who pays for the government’s mistakes, the Labor Party’s mistakes? The people, as always.

Let me be clear. It’s possible to conjure up money through electronic journal entries and not create inflation. It’s been done for centuries. In these cases, the spending must be on something that will grow the economy, grow our productive capacity and absorb the extra money—something like infrastructure. It’s impossible to get the tired old parties or the new climate mafia to talk about important infrastructure projects like the Bradfield Scheme, Copper String 2.0, Tully-Millstream hydro, Big Buffalo dam, the national rail circuit and the boomerang steel project, amongst other One Nation priorities. Meanwhile, the climate mafia are setting out to destroy our standard of living through many ill-conceived policies not based on science, contradicting the evidence.

Let me start with high electricity prices. Electricity prices are an input to business costs right through the production cycle, from the farmer running a cold room to the manufacturer running a factory to the wholesaler running a warehouse to supermarkets trying to keep their fridges cold and their lights on. When the cost of electricity rises, the cost of everything rises. Food, clothing, hardware, consumer goods, services, energy, and service sector examples such as optometrists, hairdressers, solicitors—pick a service, any service. All have electricity as a business expense. The cost of living is going up because the price of electricity is going up. Australian wholesale electricity prices are up 300 per cent in the last year. And what is the reason? It is unsustainable, unreliable wind and solar paying subsidies to billionaires in the Chinese Communist Party who are running these things. They’re the owners. The majority of large wind and solar complexes are owned by foreigners, including China and the Chinese Communist Party. Those who laugh are ignorant and condemned to suffer more.

This is combined with manipulation of the energy market by unscrupulous energy companies that should never have been allowed to buy important infrastructure. The National Electricity Market is actually a national electricity racket run by bureaucrats; it’s not a market at all.

The third element of higher electricity prices is the cost of transmission lines, poles and wires, to bring power from where the industrial solar and wind blight complexes are located to where the electricity is needed.

Our immigration rate affects prices. The more new Australians arrive, the more electricity, water, medical care and education they consume. These things are supply and demand. The more demand, the higher the price. Of course, governments can plan ahead and build out extra power generation, extra hospitals, extra dams and schools, but we don’t. Long-term planning in Australian politics means the next election, or nowadays, in the last decade or so, it means the next budget. This is no way to run a country. When One Nation talks about reducing immigration to net zero, we mean bringing in around 100,000 new arrivals each year to balance out the 100,000 who leave. Net zero is zero total immigration, easing the strain on infrastructure. This takes pressure off our economy, reducing demand and inflation, and making the essentials of life cheaper.

The climate mafia do not want to allow new dams and new electricity generation to be built, while at the same time wanting to bring in half the world as immigrants. Talk about inflation! You haven’t anything yet. Agriculture is under threat. A 43 per cent carbon dioxide reduction means culling livestock and shutting down cropping, returning that land to nature in a process called rewilding. What they call rewilding One Nation calls ‘starving people’. The less food that gets grown, the higher the price will be. One Nation will stop the madness and return Australia to good government.

We are one community, we are one nation.

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PM abandons promise to cut power bills by $275

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While PM Albanese wants electricity-grid wrecking net-zero, he will never be able to deliver his promised $275 cheaper power bills. That’s why he has had to walk away from his first election promise already.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support Senator Payne’s matter of public importance. Prime Minister Albanese’s promise to reduce electricity bills by $275 and his promise to reduce carbon dioxide output by 43 per cent are mutually exclusive. High energy prices will reduce energy usage and assist Australia to reach the 43 per cent figure. Lower prices will increase energy consumption, and that will work against the Albanese government’s target. That’s why the Albanese government so quickly ran away from his promise. The Prime Minister never intended to honour the promise, making his action cynical political expediency.

One Nation believes any attempt to implement a 43 per cent carbon dioxide reduction is a policy based on lies and distortions which do not stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Prime Minister Albanese has already signalled, across several issues, his government will be a government based on virtue signalling, not a sensible policy. For senators with no data on their side, the only option is to sell a policy on feelings. Feelings will not keep the lights on, supermarket freezers cold or hospitals open. Feelings will not warm Australians in winter or cool us in summer. Evidence based policy will. Energy deficits in several areas of Australia have already caused blackouts. The 43 per cent target will cause many more blackouts.

Rapidly increasing electricity costs will reduce consumption of electricity and buy the government time, while it asks around for a permanent solution, which is why the government is allowing this to happen. Closing down and sabotaging baseload coal has led to the national electricity racket—sorry market—showing unprecedented wholesale power prices. The average spot price of $264 per megawatt hour last quarter is more than triple the average spot price of $85 per megawatt hour this time last year. Prime Minister Albanese knew this when he made his promise, and clearly economics is not the Prime Minister’s strong suit. If the cost of an item is up 300 per cent, the chances of being able to make it cheaper without the government paying for it are zero.

Perhaps the Prime Minister can extend his employment talkfest to more aspects of government business. Let’s see if anyone knows how to use wind and solar to replace baseload coal and save Australia from electricity and energy Armageddon, because all I’m hearing so far is, ‘Build more wind and solar.’ Building more will simply add more capacity when we don’t need it, during the day, when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Solar and wind will need to be paired with some form of battery technology to move that generated electricity from the day, when we don’t need it, to the evening, when we do.

Coal sitting in hoppers ready to generate power on demand is the battery we have used successfully for 120 years. Alternatives to coal are thin on the ground. Battery storage costs are staggering and unsustainable: $1.5 million per megawatt hour. We need around 60,000 megawatt hours of energy in storage to ensure any 24-hour period is not subject to blackouts, yet batteries need 20 per cent above rated capacity to achieve full charge due to heat loss, which is why they catch fire a lot. This means we need 72,000 megawatt-hours of storage, at a cost of $108 billion every 12 years, the life of a big Tesla battery. That is $9 billion every year. The Snowy 2 big hydro battery currently under construction will provide 1,000 megawatt-hours daily for 365 a year at a cost of $5 billion. This means that pumped hydro will cost $300 billion to carry enough power for just one day. Of course, adding electric vehicle charging to the mix means a whole lot more blackouts and a whole lot more electricity price increases.

Net zero is an unaffordable fairy tale that will destroy our standard of living and destroy our lifestyle. We are one community, we are one nation and we know what the hell is needed to get back to affordable, reliable, stable electricity.

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