Typical ABC! I was listening to Jon Faine the other day and he openly admitted that he did something which will greatly benefit the Labor Party. Scott Morrison was his losing voice and Faine admitted that he gave ScoMo’s minders advice that would help get it back! It’s almost as if Faine realises that a silent Scott would be a great boon to the Labor Party so he felt the need to do all he could to help restore Morrison’s speech.
Just recently our fill-in PM was getting all hot under the collar and telling us that a 45% target was impossible…
Now I feel that I need to point out that he was talking about a renewable energy 45% target and not the two-party preferred vote for the Coalition in the coming election. The way ScoMo’s going, he looks like he may achieve that.
Of course, nothing seems to be working for the Coalition at the moment. Whether it’s their Barnaby Joyce saying he really should be leader, or calls for coal-fired power stations, everything they touch seems to turn to excrement. They even lacked the ability to simply say, “Look, we understand that these kids are upset and we are doing all we can to reduce climate change, so it’d be better if they just went to school and prepared themselves to be educated enough to seek the solutions when their time comes”, which have been far better than belittling the protesters and suggesting that they’d been “brainwashed” by all these Trotskyite teachers who have such appalling communist leanings as thinking that scientists who had studied the situation might be worth listening to. Or at least, have a more informed opinion than radio personalities who grow confused about which penis is theirs in public toilets.
The government seem to have a simple strategy for making us forget all about their latest stuff-up: they make an even bigger one so that we quickly move on and don’t dwell on that minister who did something inappropriate and would have resigned straight away in those days when ministerial integrity meant something…
You know the funny part is that I’ll bet you could try to name all the ministers I’ve just described, and someone could probably come up with another one.
But in some ways, this is an effective strategy. It means that we don’t dwell on the absurdity of Morrison’s statements about the renewable energy targets. For months, we’ve been told that we’ll easily meet our Paris targets and there’s no need for any further action. And the 23.5% renewable energy target is like Baby Bear’s bed. It’s just right and we can go to sleep.
Now let’s think about this for a second. If this was anything else would we say that we’re going to meet the target easily so there’s no need for a higher/lower target figure? For example, does this make sense? “We aimed to cut the road toll by ten percent, and it looks like we’ll do it easily so we’ll be taking booze buses off the road for the rest of the year.”? Or “We planned to save $300 million with target efficiencies, and it looks like we’ll do it easily so we’re going to ease up and just let people waste a few dollars here and there.”
While we’re able to reach 23.5% renewables without a worry, the slightly higher figure of 45% will destroy the economy, according to Prophet Scott. There will be great winds and a terrible shaking and the temple of Mammon will be split in two and your neighbour will take your job and then loseth his own because…
Because we had more renewables in the system.
Of course, nobody is asking Scott the Bewildered to explain exactly how the greater reliance on renewables would ruin our economic health. We’re just meant to accept it as a given because even the most basic questioning tears it to shreds.
- Cost? Renewables are now cheaper than coal.
- Reliability? Battery storage is pretty well advanced and by 2030, there should be more efficiencies. Compare the mobile phones of today with those of eleven years ago. Yes, we did have the first iPhone, but it didn’t do half what today’s will do. Besides, it’s only 45%. There’ll still be 55% relying on fossil fuels which should be enough to provide that mythical baseload power that renewables supposedly can’t supply.
- People in the mining industry losing their jobs? Well, mining only employs a fraction of our workforce and coal is only a small part of that. How many jobs will renewables create?
- People in the coal-fired power station becoming redundant. Again, will this be balanced by jobs in the renewable sector?
Now, maybe there’s some other reason that I haven’t mentioned. Perhaps Scott knows something that I don’t. If so, I think that it’s incumbent on him to share how and why he sees Labor’s target as the wrecker that he promises it’ll be.
Whatever, we shouldn’t dwell too much on this. With this government, you know that everything changes. Take Milo Yiannopoulos. First, he was banned, then our Immigration Minister personally approved his visa, but now Milo has been banned again. So, I’m sure that there’ll be something in the coming days to focus our attention away from climate change and terrorism and Barnaby.
Another poor Newspoll and a challenge from Dutton? But before you decide that’s too ridiculous to even consider, let me remind you, these are the people who didn’t see a problem with voting for the “It’s Ok to be White” legislation, and then defended it by arguing they weren’t even aware of what they were voting for.
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