We know that the coalition are better economic managers because they told us so. The coalition are also good on one liners. As Josh Frydenberg told us during the budget speech “The government is delivering on its commitment to secure affordable and reliable energy supply and has achieved its goal of wholesale electricity prices under $70/MWh”.
The worrying thing is that they now lie to us without hesitation : Josh Frydenberg at every opportunity tells us how electricity prices have fallen 8 per cent since the last election due to the ‘steady as she goes’ coalition management of the economy. What he doesn’t mention is the 10 per cent lift in car prices, the 8 per cent increase in milk prices, the 11 per cent jump in furniture prices or the 13.5 per cent increase in childcare costs since 2019.
But even on electricity costs they are telling lies. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said in recent days that wholesale electricity costs have soared 141 per cent in the three months to 31 March 2022 compared with the same period last year and these increases will be passed on to consumers (probably after the election).
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that :
‘In the first quarter of the year, NSW’s wholesale price was $87 a megawatt hour, up 129 per cent from $38 a megawatt hour this time last year. In Queensland, the wholesale price hit $150, up 248 per cent from $43.
The wholesale price for the first quarter in Victoria was just $57 a megawatt hour. The state relies on brown coal, which unlike black coal is not influenced by the global market because it’s not exported.
South Australia, which doesn’t burn any coal and has the greatest proportion of renewable power in its energy mix, had a wholesale price of $71 in the first quarter. ‘
In WA electricity prices are regulated by the state government so that consumers are not hit by fluctuating world pricing on energy.
They won’t mention that wind and solar costs are not subject to international price fluctuations but as we are generally locked into global pricing structures on coal and gas, with seventy percent of our electricity coming from fossil fuels, the benefits of a transition to renewable energy have yet to show up in national energy costs across the nation – and if Canavan and the Nationals have their way they never will.
Frydenberg is in denial and has yet to acknowledge this massive increase in electricity costs but when he does he will undoubtedly lay the blame with … wait for it … the Labor party and the best way of avoiding these increases is to re-elect the coalition.
Morrison has said that the reasons for the increases, apart from Labor, are the war in Ukraine which has created shortages of coal and gas and according to Scott the rigid laws of supply & demand require that we pay more for our own coal when it’s in short supply in Europe – go figure !
The solution to this global market disruption according to Morrison – I don’t hold a shovel mate – is not to vote for Labor or the TEAL Independents and all will be well.
You know and I know that the real problem is that we are locked into global markets for the supply of fossil fuels and until we start to take seriously the transition to renewable energy we will continue to be price takers when it comes to coal and gas even though we are one of the world’s major suppliers of both commodities.
Meanwhile, the coalition have dropped the economy as being their strong suit and have moved on to national security and preparations for war. Over to you Captain Mainwaring.
Seriously, how could anybody re-elect this mob ?
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It’s not over till Marissa Paine sings.
I ask the LNP: why did you sell our energy market to overseas entities? If we have one of the largest supplies of coal and gas in the world, how about using some of this for the people who live here (temporarily).
It all started when we (Liberal government and big business) embraced Neo Liberalism in the 1980’s. We now know that it does not work, there is no trickle-down effect and Globalism only results in local quality of life reductions – rich get richer the rest get poorer.
WA also has a gas reservation policy which “seeks to make gas equivalent to 15% of exports available for WA consumers”. On the upside for our offshore buyers, long term contracts for low prices have been locked in. Imagine if the Aust govt exercised forward planning based on the novel idea of self-sufficiency. Too late.
Due to rampant Fossil Fuel Corporate Greed, the price of coal, diesel and gas continues to rise. This is making electricity produced from fossil fuels more and more expensive while at the same time the cost of electricity generated from renewable energy sources remains much cheaper and more and more attractive.
The 2022 average wholesale price of electricity so far this year in NSW is 7.7c per KWh. Compare that to the retail price of electricity at somewhere between 20 to 30c per KWh. That’s a whopping 200 to 300 per cent mark up, ripping off NSW electricity consumers.
Our electricity should be much cheaper than it is, especially if more renewable energy was allowed into the national grid.
While promising to “keep electricity prices low”, the Liar PM, Scotty from Marketing and The Minister for Burning Fossil Fuels, Angus Taylor are conning us and doing the opposite.
In collusion with the corrupt fossil fuel energy companies and fossil fuel billionaires, they are actually maintaining artificially high retail energy costs.
The main reason is to protect coal and gas fired power stations from serious competition from renewable energy. They are also doing nothing about upgrading the national energy grid to allow more renewable energy to be traded. Once again it’s to protect coal and gas fired power stations from price competition from renewable energy.
This is a federal government that is corrupt to its core and governing for the billionaires.
Let’s get rid of Scomo.
The LNP say that they have been successful in creating low employment; but, what percentage of those employed earn enough to pay for all their costs. Remember that to be rated employed people only need to work for one hour in a statistical period. Under employment and the number of people needing to supplement their work payments through Centrelink are other factors.
Stagnant wages and homelessness are other details that can be sheeted home to the LNP, they have been in government since 2013. We need more than politicians seeking photo opportunities in their electorates, we need a vision for the future and policies to match. We have seen no vision for Australia since September 2013 in my opinion.
Don Chip, and The Australian Democrats had as their theme “keeping the bastards honest”, we need that theme to operate more than ever.
When you hear ABS economists and federal politicians talking about the unemployment rate, it doesn’t mean what John Curtin took it to mean in 1945. Over the years, politicians have beaten the ABS into submission to change how we actually measure unemployment. Its politicised the stats to make themselves look better than they really are. Something the Liar PM, Scotty from Marketing is very good at.
It’s something to bear in mind when the ABS releases its monthly unemployment data.
Not only do you need to “work” just 1 hour a fortnight or month to be considered “fully employed” the Government also doesn’t count those people who are underemployed, who have given up looking for work, who want to work but can’t because of external circumstances or have given up trying to register with Centrelink.
They also count people still on JobKeeper payments as “fully employed”. There are hundreds of thousands of workers “attached” to their workplaces through the COVID-19 lockdown, and those workers have still been considered employed even if they haven’t been working any hours at all.
Then add to that the number of people who are still considered officially employed but who have been working zero hours because they’ve had no work or they’ve been temporarily “stood down”.
If you made a decent, honest attempt to count the number of people not working, the official unemployment rate should be much higher.
Most economists not connected to the Scomo Marketing Circus estimate the “real” unemployment rate would have been between 11 and 12 per cent in April.
Morrison has a new pitch …..
“You may not like everything we’ve done, you may not like me that much, but that’s not the point. The point is you know what our plan is … now is not the time to take a risk on what you don’t know.”
Actually, the point is that you have been in office for three terms, and you are still talking about “a plan”. Nothing delivered? No list of achievements?
In the last eight years of Coalition rule, there have been more than 20 different climate and energy policies, which have been announced with fanfare before fizzing into the background, or just being trashed altogether.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/17/eight-years-20-policies-how-australias-leaders-have-fumbled-and-dithered-on-climate
Would somebody be so kind as to advise exactly what the Nazional$ plan and strategies are to make life for Australian voters better and affordable in reginal and remote locations.
The term ”Australian voters” excludes all sitting politicians representing the self-serving unelected political hacks of the Nazional$ Party.
STOP THE LIES VOTE LABOR
Is it time for the MRRT, which Gillard fought so hard, Abbott demolished, to be recreated to claw back windfall profits in overseas sales? The money used to defend against rises in power prices? The ore & gas belongs to the people, not those extracting it. Windfall money earned belongs to the people.
Florence
Last year it was reported that :
The Resource Rent tax has been a failure and this government is happy to leave the situation as it is, at the expense of the Australian people and our economy : lobbying works !
Many decades ago Aust had the chance to partner with oil & gas companies in both the extraction of, and processing of resources in much the same way that Norway successfully did. Rather than be part of the value-added end of the equation the Aust govt took the lazy route of settling for exploration lease fees & royalty taxes based on tonnes exported, except when States granted ‘royalty tax holidays’. As alluded to by Terence, most costs to extraction comps are clawed back by creative accounting and Aust ends up with large holes in the ground and next to nothing to show for it. Actually less than nothing if govt gets billed for site rehab when mines go bust. Voting LNP and Labor last sounds like a good idea.
Never let it be said that these fossil fuel giants don’t have a sense of humour, as they continue on their extracting pathways to contribute to the planet being burnt to a crisp…
Gorgon
/ˈɡɔːɡ(ə)n/
Each of three sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, with snakes for hair, who had the power to turn anyone who looked at them to stone.
[derogatory] a fierce, frightening, or repulsive woman.
Origin
via Latin from Greek Gorgō, from gorgos ‘terrible’.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Gorgon is not a fully-owned Shell entity:
The Gorgon Project is operated by Chevron Australia and is a joint venture of the Australian subsidiaries of Chevron (47.3 percent), ExxonMobil (25 percent), Shell (25 percent), Osaka Gas (1.25 percent), Tokyo Gas (1 percent) and JERA (0.417 percent).
(source: Chevron Australia)
Is that the same Chevron which paid no tax on $900m taxable income in 2019 but donated $129,685 to Labor, Libs & Nat parties?
Do Scrotie and Co. even realise the astonishing stupdiidty of their marketing of Scrotie? Every time I turn on the telly, there is Scrotie, baking bread, pouring beers, driving a euclid- you name it, Scrotie can do every job under the sun, except his own – running a country, being prime minister, looking after the future of us all.
Here’s a hint Scrotie, your real job is to govern the country, by facilitating representational democracy to materialise the will of the people, exclusively not the well healed, your circle of mates, the influential and the corporates.