As Crikey fearlessly predicted last week, the government is now backing away from a bipartisan Clean Energy Target to provide certainty for energy investors, in favour of a more coal-centric policy. The goal is to portray Labor as the party of letting the lights go out, complete with clunky nicknames such as “Blackout Bill” and “Brownout Butler” (sadly, we’ve had “No Coal Joel”, not the more obvious “Flickering Lights Fitzgibbon”). Shorten and Butler, apparently, were in charge of Australian energy policy until a few months ago, so deserve the blame.
A deliberate attempt to avoid bipartisanship on energy will prolong exactly the uncertainty that has curbed investment in power generation capacity, exacerbating the growing under-supply of power. But, judge the government how you want, it’s looking at a persistent six-point polling gap that would see it tossed out of office in a flash if it were forced to an election; desperate times call for desperate measures.
As former Clean Energy Finance Corporation head Oliver Yates noted this morning, that the Prime Minister and his Energy Minister are trying to force AGL to keep open a power plant scheduled for closure in 2022 further adds to the uncertainty of companies considering investing in the new capacity that would replace Liddell. Indeed, perhaps AGL should have followed the prescription of the Finkel Review, endorsed by the government, and stayed silent until three years out from closure — 2019 — to reveal its plans for Liddell. Giving the market a generous seven years to prepare for closure has brought AGL nothing but trouble.
The government is thus undermining investment both at a macro and a micro level. Its refusal to agree to an overall energy policy, and the likelihood it will embrace one that, intentionally, Labor can’t accept, will deter all energy investment. Its thugging of AGL to keep Liddell open will deter investment in replacement capacity for that.
Politically, the perpetuation of under-investment in power generation will increase the risk of blackouts, which can then be blamed on renewable energy and Labor. Theoretically, this is a political gift that will keep on giving — you perpetuate the problem that you can blame on your opponents. But it only works until the media and voters work out that it’s your politicking that is causing the problem. Meantime, we’re stuck with the world’s dumbest energy policy, which gives us high prices, poor reliability and rising carbon emissions.
If one is looking for credibility in politicians surely “blackout Bill” simply can’t cut it against Guy’s spot on, “The Napoleon of Bellevue Hill”. The inescapable truth is that Government’s are charged to implement policy . . . not bullshit.
I’ve been trying to figure out the coalition’s endgame with all this slavish devotion to a dying commodity. What is the benefit for pursuing coal when the entire world is turning its back on it? It defies reason and is not sustainable. Even worse, they are starting to look very stupid and even energy suppliers are crab walking away from the LNP.
I just can’t see the plan of blaming Labor on energy failure working out whilst they are backing fossil fuel to the extent that they are. These are the lackwits who passed a lump of coal around parliament as if it were a ruby. They pretty much own the disaster about to overwhelm them.
Coalition energy policy isn’t about economics, Nudiefish. It’s solely about politics. The Coalition adopted vehement anti-environmentalism as a strategy to distinguish its brand of neoliberalism from Labor’s. Anti-environmentalism drives an ideological wedge between Labor’s traditional working class base and its newer ‘inner city’ middle class supporters (and party operatives), because environmentalism means shutting down the sort of dirty industries that traditionally employed the great mass of working class people.
The Coalition of course knows the economics don’t work and supply crises are looming, but that’s precisely why it and its media backers have commenced such an unprincipled yet furious propaganda blitz to blame Labor starting now for what’s coming. It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to create enough doubt in voters minds that the energy market crisis is not all the Coalition’s fault for it to escape electoral punishment for its economic vandalism.
The question now is can Labor rise to the amazing political opportunity this represents and bravely tack away from neoliberalism and take a grateful public with it, or will it try to play it safe and simply join the Coalition in kicking the can down the road. Sadly, most likely, the latter, I think.
Thanks Will, I understand the attempted wedge to Labor well enough, but it is a stupid wedge and cannot work. The LNP are not even pretending to act sane anymore, which is a prerequisite for a successful wedge. I’ll give you an example:
Turnbull summoning the AGL boss to Canberra ordering him to reverse the closure of the Liddell power plant can only have one outcome. Only one… the AGL board telling him to get stuffed. There is no way the AGL shareholders will throw money away just to satisfy the PM’s political problems with his own backbench. How can you pull off a wedge on Labor on this issue? Labor are just standing back watching the LNP kabuki theatre and eating popcorn.
I understand that when it all falls over they will try some desperate spin – that is all they have left, but they are also down the hole for about 20 seats, to date, so the spin they deploy better be a freaken dozy.
Alas and alack, your last sentence is true, forsooth.
What is the benefit for pursuing coal when the entire world is turning its back on it? It defies reason and is not sustainable.
Its sponsors have rights over coal in the ground.
Coal in the ground is worthless. Dug up and sold, even for a relative pittance, still makes more than leaving it in the ground.
Ergo, as much coal as possible must be dug up and sold.
(There’s also the anti-environmentalist identity politics aspect.)
I disagree. Digging coal up when nobody is buying the stuff is not even making a pittance.
The way I see it is that the carbon industry is panicking and is not acting rationally anymore. They are now reaching the “Louie XIV” stage just before the 1789 revolution and the LNP is captive to their fantasies.
Louie XVI
Louis.
People are still buying it. There’s still plenty of coal power stations around the world.
“Politically, the perpetuation of under-investment in power generation will increase the risk of blackouts, which can then be blamed on renewable energy and Labor.”
How? How could it be? That can only happen when the mainstream news media is bereft, dysfunctional and largely brain dead. This could not happen with a functioning media.
Isn’t the government just about to stitch up some new media laws? Wow, what a coincidence. Look away!
Having seen what became of Colin Barnett, the PM and Minister for Environment and Energy would know what happens to governments that don’t deliver.
Did Oliver say that ‘the government’ was misrepresenting/”misinterpreting” the findings of the AEMO report?
Why would Turnbull and Frydenberg want to depoliticise the issue – as soon as they did that we’d start thinking about their other chronic cock-ups?