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We are being conned if we believe the government

In my recent article I concluded with:

Confronted with the fact that no one wants to invest in coal, what do you do? One is you set up an inquiry, stack it with lovers of the clean black stuff, and call it the ”King review.”

The idea is to grab some cash from the $2 billion Climate Solutions Fund, as well as Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).

In their findings you have the inquiry recommend that the funds be opened up to provide funding to heavy emitters and fossil fuel projects.

Not a bad plan. After all, it wasn’t the intention to use the funds in this way.

They are not just environmental vandals but straight out corrupt con merchants. Angus Taylor makes a good crook, it would seem. Or at least he knows how to get away with things.

I wanted to expand a little on the subject of this con job. You see there was a time when Australians didn’t like being conned.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s a con artist,” my folks would say.

I can vividly remember that phrase. As a teenager we seemed to apply it to everything. We sort of instantly knew when someone was bullshitting.

Now it seems we have lost that instinct and are now a gullible lot ready to believe whomever and whatever we are told.

If you didn’t read pertinent articles in The Guardian, The Age (paywall) or News24 you wouldn’t have a clue as to what the Coalition is doing. You might if you watch Sky After Dark and wanted a warped version of the truth.

After committing the worst possible domestic violence on our part of the planet, the Coalition decided to have a review of their existing madness, with men who in part created the environmental vandalism and go back to the past and use discredited technology.

Having spent a decade proving their incompetence these same idiot politicians now speak of the virtues of gas as being some sort of gentle nurse to the raped victim.

As Katherine Murphy wrote in The Guardian:

“Politicians and their advisers used to talk up the virtues of gas as a transitional fuel, and they used to talk about carbon capture and storage (CCS) as technology that governments needed to invest in to drive the transition to low-emissions economies.

The great botch-up is now well past infancy, and Australia’s record on climate and energy is a disaster so profound it’s still traumatising backstage protagonists years after the stadium rock wreckers have left” the crime scene.”

We all incur a cost for the upkeep of our health. Why then should we not be liable for the cost of a healthy planet.

Allow me to bring you up to date. The Coalition is proposing that after appointing a committee headed by former Fortescue boss Nev Power and others of the same persuasion, who in turn have probably been instructed on what to conclude; propose to spend heaps of your money on a gas-fired revival of manufacturing.

Conning the Australian people is really that simple. They do it all the time and people don’t care or don’t know. Paddy Manning in The Monthly reported that:

“Environment groups reacted with alarm, and independent Warringah MP Zali Steggall has called on the federal government to bring industry groups together to canvass their views on stimulus measures, arguing that the COVID-19 commission’s decision-making processes lacked transparency

Manning reported that:

Shadow climate and energy minister Mark Butler welcomed the roadmap’s step away from coal, but described the document as the Coalition’s 19th energy policy – and one that was light on details. “Minister Taylor has pulled a hamstring making sure that his anti-renewable colleagues know that expensive new coal is still in the mix, while also tipping his hat to expensive and dangerous nuclear power,” said Butler.

“… shadow resources minister Joel Fitzgibbon told Sky News, the roadmap appears to imply that CCS could keep the ever-contentious Liddell power station operating in his Hunter Valley electorate. “It’s just ludicrous to suggest that you can retrofit any carbon capture and storage system to a more-than-50-year-old coal-fired generator,” Fitzgibbon said.”

Once again a political donations-focused government seems determined to do nothing about climate change.

Absent is a price on carbon and nothing about a new regulatory strategy and there isn’t any room for a sizeable public investment.

And God help us! Talk about going back to the past. It even talks about big role for carbon capture and storage. You know, that technology that was going to change the future and give us clean coal.

Goodness knows how many millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on this obscenely expensive yet failed technology over the past 10 years.

The Prime Minister made a proper clown of himself in his handling of the summer fires, and the punters told him so.

During the coronavirus pandemic he made up a lot of ground. However, with climate change he finds himself, on the one hand, between his job, party donations, the backbench, the cabinet, and a squillion-dollar fossil-fuel industry that has he and his government by the short and curlies, and on the other hand what is best for the planet and its people.

It is not as though the government is without options. If it had the intestinal fortitude it could use a COVID-19 recovery that would drive full-time sustainable jobs and growth on the back of a low-emissions transition that would last 50 years or more.

The other option is to use the recovery to continue with fossil fuels and pretend (lie your way through it) that in a time of great uncertainty you had a moment of gas led fossil fuel enlightenment. Jobs versus the environment.

History tells me they will take option two.

My thought for the day.

In terms of the environment I wonder what price the people of tomorrow will pay for the stupidity of today.

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11 comments

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  1. Josephus

    Beyond depressing all this. Not just here in Oz, either. I do think humanity is rooned and that soon enough there will be tigers and elephants roaming the abandoned cities and no human animals left to read the dystopian novels based on that very supposition. My favourite is The War with the Newts, by Karel Capek, early 1930s from memory.

  2. wam

    The pool was cool this morning but your words are warming.
    ‘these same idiot politicians’ refers to labor because the rabbott, suppository flushed, turnbull the ‘redeemer(look at your archives lord to see your ‘hope’ for the copper man) hari kari and smirko were all new at the last three elections. How sad labor is not here to deal with the crisis, thanks boobby.
    ‘The Prime Minister made a proper clown of himself’
    ‘Taylor has pulled a hamstring ‘ and, as we were told in our youth, will soon go blind.
    The SS(spears and sheridan) were in form and the women well talked over. Today sppeerrs excelled as a sky man.
    ps
    how did the fibre to the node and copper go in the home school and doctor consultations??
    pps
    A bit of the frydenberg newsletter:
    Dear Albert,
    This was another very tough week for Australia.
    In just over a month, our share market lost more than a third of its value.
    But for our unprecedented $130 billion JobKeeper program, which now has more than 860,000 businesses formally enrolled covering over six million Australian employees, they predict it would reach 15%.
    690,000 businesses with payments of up to $100,000 to boost cash flow.
    117,000 apprentices with a 50% wage subsidy.
    1.9 million Australians are now receiving the $550 Coronavirus Supplement.
    The first $750 payment to over 7 million Australians was made in April and a second $750 payment will be made in July.
    Lower deeming rates and halving the superannuation minimum drawn down requirements to help retirees.
    Australia entered this COVID-19 crisis from a position of strength.
    In six years, over 1.5 million jobs were created. Last year, we balanced the budget for the first time in 11 years.
    Compared to most countries, Australia is in a stronger position to recover.
    We must stay strong. We must stay together. We must maintain our resolve.

    Regards,

    Josh Frydenberg
    Treasurer

  3. Phil Pryor

    With a wife from Darlinghurst road, or a husband from Oxford St., A cup winning horse from the pet food knacker’s yard and a vehicle from dodgy John’s rustbuckets, the average voter should trust this government, led by a saturated shower of stinko shitty sham from the lying pool of advertising. It all makes great sense. Backed by third reich journalism in the Der Sturmer standards of Murdoch’s maggots, the government stands without much fear of challenge. Fat Clive and the fat frau of the west, the obese obersts of political bribery, corruption, patronage and donorship, are assured that this government of floaters and stinkers will try to ignore science in their favour. Who needs honesty and decency.., it always interfered with egomaniacs and their drives. Ask Sigmund.

  4. Jack sprat

    ” propaganda is to a democracy as a bludgeon is to a totalitarian state ” Noam Chomsky

  5. Robin Alexander

    After listening to Angus Taylor this morning bubbling over with confidence talking rapidly about hi obsession of gas today? We have a shortage but all be OK August September SANTOS will get Gov. OK go ahead big plan for PILLIGA FOREST GAS FIELD?so confident it will pass?? After receiving largest amount objections to any project? 24000written objections?all for real honest reasons!HOW DARE THEY presume success with so much possible danger in so many ways this Plan should absolutely be refused? Angus saying massive shortage Gas? Lies flow out that mouth so easily? If there is shortage? his own party would be to blameJOHNNY HOWARD SOLD OUR GAS TO OVERSEAS INTERESTS PIPED TO GLADSTONE PROCESSED SENT OVERSEAS FOR PEANUTS! NO TAX PAYABLE! Typical LNP LET ALL BIG BOYS HAVE WHATEVER? NO TAX PAYABLE bet Santos will pay little if any?this is policy set in stone for this Party! Angus shouldn’t even be sitting in Parliament let alone ENERGY MINISTER? always thinking conniving how to make a fortune for himself in whatever he touches! now its SANTOS investments obvious? get his dirty fingers out of this plan FRACKING IS KNOWN DISASTER! Councils some residents eyes glaze over promise of BOOM! Take look southern QLD TOWN since BOOMS OF GAS! GREAT WHILE ALL BEING SET UP homes built influx residents older resident leave town rents become far to expensive renovations town pubs ect. Catering influx!unexpectedly all is stopped finished BOOM OVER! no more work? Workers cannot sell lovely expensive homes $400/600000 homes publicans extensions $200.000 cost nobody in pub anymore ! The expensive homes selling under $200000? Rentals empty! Towns people tell town fills with feral type cheap rents homes Crime rate increased to 250per cent this was Charleville 18mnths ago described on line dangers of GAS BOOMS! Not or our bountiful Back soil slopes plains richest agricultural area! PILLIGA Forest is replenishment area for ARTISIAN WATER for our area beautiful rich area last NATIVE FOREST IN NSW risk poisoning our water risk Far to great! Without this underground water nothing will exist this area Towns communities only source water as for farmers & Graziers! Only source water for all! RISK FAR TO GREAT? ANGUS IS UNTRUSTWORTHY INDIVIDUAL IN ANYTHING HE TOUCHES Proved so many times!

  6. andy56

    The problem they face is that they only see things in one dimension. Its the same shit we have had since abbott. Its a dead end and they know it. They are redesigning the rubics cube of stupidity to put a square peg in a round hole. The number of blunders over the last two weeks suggest it back to normal for them

  7. B Sullivan

    If you want gas then instead of extracting it from gas fields with utter distain for the environment, extract hydrogen from water using solar power. Turn a little of those vast acres of barley fields into solar farms and the same sun that used to grow the barley can be used to make the cleanest gas in the universe.

    If Australia’s government used some of the Climate Solutions Fund to rescue farmers from the perpetual drought by turning them into solar-hydrogen farmers not only would it prove to be more cost effective than mining for natural gas, it would also provide a solid base for developing an economy based upon modern technology powered by cheaper renewable fuels. It might also win votes.

    No fracking required, lower production costs, cleaner product, you could have a limitless supply as long as the sun keeps shining. And when you burn the hydrogen to produce energy, you can recycle the waste product, water, to extract the hydrogen again and again and again.

  8. Mrs Wobbly

    The cost to our planet and future generations to come, by this bunch of FASCISTS CRIMINALS will come back to HAUNT them ONLY when the Australian people STAND UP and DEMAND DEMOCRACY and ACCOUNTABILITY from our GOVERNMENTS by removing our CORRUPT POLITICIANS and ILLEGAL BEHAVIOUR in our NONE democratic PARLIAMENT of Australia. Until is Happens, more of the same from our so called LEADERSHIP in this country, ONLY concerns being THE MASTERS, POWER, GREED and PROFITS these are the only thing that motivates FASCISTS to continue with this dying industry called fossil fuels. At any cost while bare faced LYING and IGNORING the WILL of the Australian people, who put them in place. The FASCISM LNP governments are not concerned, as they either don’t WANT to believe or PROFITS get in the way of what’s the CORRECT thing to do for the future of the planet, let alone Australia. The cause it always helped by THE MASTERS PROPAGANDA MEDIA coverage at saturation point, SPEWING out to the Australian viewer is the MASTERS PROPAGANDA hymn sheets. INSULTING to our THINKING POPULATIONS INTELLIGENCE, in AUSTRALIA. PEOPLE REVOLT FOR DEMOCRATIC AUSTRALIA AGAIN.

  9. DrakeN

    Mrs Wobbly,
    it is hard to insult the intelligence of people who clearly demonstrate that they have very little of that commodity.

    P.S. Shouting in capital letters dilutes, rather than reinforcing your comment.

  10. Jack Cade

    Mrs Wobbly

    Your closing sentence imagines two unlikely scenarios – there is no huge reservoir of thinking intelligents in Australia, and even less is there a possibility of a revolt for democracy in Australia. 23 seats in Queensland handing government to Morrison, fully aware of what gobshites his government comprised, are proof of that.

  11. Stephengb

    Mr Wobbly.

    You lost me when you started to shout.

    Meanwhile there is a genuine representative democracy movement in play right now :

    Represent Us Australia.

    Look it up

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