(The phoney fight over energy sources)
Imagine, you’re driving through the southern tablelands one winter’s morning. It’s cold outside (minus 5). You’re on the way to a meeting – about two hours away. Because you were up unusually early, you skipped breakfast. Now you’re hungry .
As you reduce speed driving down the Main Street of a small town en route you scan both sides of the street looking for place to enjoy a substantial hot brekkie and a piping coffee. And there they are! Two, bright welcoming cafes almost opposite each other on different sides of the street.
One’s called à la Albanese. The other Dutton’s Brew ha ha. You pull in on your left and park directly in front of à La Albanese. There’s a breakfast billboard by the door. It reads,
Just what you’re looking for.
You enter and take a table in the sun, by the window. A friendly waitress (pen and pad at the ready) is soon at your side. She asks ‘And what would you like today? … “Eggs, sunny-side up, two, on toast, with a couple of bacon rashers, well done, crisp ….preferably with little white fat” you enthusiastically reply. Her smile evaporates, “I’m sorry sir we don’t offer bacon, we’re an eggs restaurant… “Oh” …. “Really? Crestfallen, you finish with…“In that case I’ll just have a short black thanks”.
You quickly drink the coffee and leave. But as you’re still feeling more than a little peckish you decide to cross the street to see if Dutton’s offers something more substantial.
As you approach the double doors you see this cafe too has a sandwich board standing outside. It reads,
At last.
You enter and take a table by the fire with high hopes. Yet again a friendly waitress asks what you’d like. You repeat a close approximation of what you ordered at A La Albanese (this time with slightly more emphasis on the bacon and slightly less on the eggs). Surprisingly , the two waitresses’ replies are very very similar… “I’m sorry, we’re a bacon cafe, we don’t serve eggs. à La Albanese across the road is an egg specialist, maybe you’d care to try there?’
This time you didn’t order a coffee. As you drove out of town on to the highway you wondered if you’d come across a McDonalds where you could get an egg and bacon burger with relish and a coffee for half the price you’d pay at the two main street cafes. Perhaps not the same quality, but definitely more satisfying all round.
When recounting the episode to a few locals after your meeting a rumbling chuckle turns into comment. “Didn’t you know each of those places is owned by a retired pollie? Yes, they were in different parties. Even back then they couldn’t agree on anything. Nothing’s changed. If one says ‘yes’ the other will say ‘no’. Neither could or would compromise with the other. They couldn’t even agree which side of the street was the best for a cafe…but they wanted to keep an eye on each other, that’s why they’re opposite each other. That’s the story behind why the town’s got eggs on one side of the street and bacon on the other. and not many patrons.
I went on to ask “what’s the free mushroom thing all about?” Another rumbling chuckle. “Come on, you know that pollies treat everyone like mushrooms; things that need to be kept in the dark. They just can’t break the habit. They think customers love being mushroomed”.
Nobody in the room was surprised such a ludicrous situation developed.
After all that’s how our political class always carries on. The business of politics is politics. The ambition of all players in the game is for their side to win and hold office by whatever means necessary. That motivation trumps all.
To have a chance of winning the Grand Final (the always close next election) every team (party) has to differentiate itself from all others to attract the biggest fan (voter) following possible, a fan base that loves its ‘stars’ and derides their on field (political) opponents. That need to appear unique and superior leads to a lot of rha-rhaing of an emotionally arousing kind, a lot of exaggeration, oversimplification and slogan chanting. It’s a model of behaviour also beloved by the media because it provides them with an unending stream of ‘breaking news’ stories, of squabbles, rumours, surprises and dirty deeds to play out on air and fill their newspapers. Conflict is grist to the media’s mills, it attracts eyeballs and, therefore, advertisers. It’s a gladiatorial process that leaves only one team standing.
Bravo! You’ve won. You’ve silenced those stupid enough to stand against you.
The way our political class has handled the issue of providing electricity for the nation examples an all too familiar libretto which accompanies this form of comedic-tragedy .
The prelude to this peculiarly Australian version of this all too familiar opera stretches back a long way, well before Hawke, then (soto voce) through the Howard years to thunderingly resurface under Rudd 2007 for a brief while before being fumbled off stage by Gillard with cries of “There’ll never be carbon tax in my Government”. Rudd during his brief revival, showed little passion for the subject.
Abbott strode back to centre stage as an ‘anti climate warmer’ to loudly endorse the use of fossil fuels (coal in particular ) forever. A chorus of corporate miners hummed yeah, yeah, yeah in the background to the accompaniment of the sweet sound of pieces of eight falling into the coffers of the Coalition.
Turnbull, in true Wagnerian style (playing Wotan, his favourite role) dramatically solved the fossil fuel problem with a single miraculous stroke of true genius, the announcement of Snowy Hydro 2.0 . Not to be distracted or outdone by such a dazzling performance , Morrison (Scomo, the Jester) appeared in Parliament with a lump of coal in hand, smilingly reassuring us all we having nothing to fear from this benign servant of mankind. He retired into the wings, dazed, after being tripped over by the women’s movement .
Albanese (dressed in the white robes of God the Father) accompanied by Bowen (in the fearsome garb of Gabriel the good archangel) then returned from exile to cut off the Medusa like heads of all the fossil fuel demons with a single blow using a sword made of sun and wind, assisted by a vigorous fluttering of Gabriel’s giant wings. Another miracle. Just when Peace and Reassurance seemed to have regained their proper place in the firmament yet another Chicken Little (Dutton the Doomsayer) appeared from stage right to announce the sky will fall – unless we go nuclear.
All that time – in spite of all the posturing, all the words and flimsy logic seen on stage – power prices continued on their upward path oblivious to what’s been happening in this theatre of the absurd.
Yes, it’s been an excruciatingly long ,tiring opera (over 20 years so far, with the final act still to come (another world first for Australia), one that hasn’t been helped by lacklustre performances in some of the key roles and poor, unconvincing script writing.
You’re advised to have a good breakfast of eggs and bacon, and more than a few coffees, before taking your seat in this overpriced production where nothing much, bar talk, ever seems to happen.
Besides being far, far too long this play has a major weakness that undermines its credibility. All the actors in it are politicians. They try to act and speak like statesmen and stateswomen, but just can’t pull it off. They start off talking about the National Interest in grandiose terms but nearly always end up talking about their own interests and the interests of those that support them. They sound like the spin doctors they really are. The ‘truth‘ they mouth is something that’s been twisted into palatable (hopefully plausible) stories they hope you’ll swallow with such gratitude that you’ll vote for them while decrying the obvious stupidity of their political opponents. They’re salesmen. Some are good salesmen, the majority not.
Maybe they just lack the knowledge and wherewithal to tackle such a technical issue as making sure there’s always power there when you plug into a power point ?
After all, the vast majority have been educated in law, economics or business studies, the arts etc and practiced those skills in business, the unions or as political staffers. Inother words they’ve have had careers in areas that have nothing to do with such technical and scientific matters.
That shouldn’t be a problem. They (and their strategists, speechwriters and the public service) should be capable of understanding the experts who do understand such matters – and take advice from them. Australia and the wider word is full of amply qualified people who do possess those necessary specialist, expert skills. They beaver away in places like the CSIRO, universities, research laboratories, think tanks, schools of electrical engineering and applied economics, on site building wind farms on land and sea, solar farms and nuclear reactors – in consultancy firms and a small army of bureaucrats and statutory advisers. More than 100 Nobel Prizes have gone to practitioners in these fields (consultancy firms excepted).
The knowledge is there. It’s how we’ve used it where the deficiency lies. The problem Australia faces is neither new or unique. It’s been on the table too long because its resolution has been blocked by party politics, vested interests and the timidity of our political class.
Surely the problem, while big, isn’t that complex.
(1). There seems consensus that Australians WANT a near emisionless power system that’s reliable, affordable, safe and environmentally neutral (if not friendly).
(2). There’s agreement that because of past inactivity and fluffing around the Country is now in a rush, bordering on a CRISIS path, to achieve those objectives within the time frames Australia’s committed to internationally.
(3). If we are to change the goalpost (and decide to live with a higher level of emissions into our long run future – levels higher than those currently proposed by Labor) the time to agree on what that level should be is NOW before we commit to yet another forward plan. Changing goalposts all the time is one of the major paths to disaster.
(4). The need for speed (catch up) will involve additional costs, sub-optimal solutions, screw ups, heartaches and broken promises. They’re the unfortunate but inevitable consequences of trying to compress things into too short a time frame. We should expect hitches, but be prepared to address them quickly to prevent critical and crippling blockages.
Above all, we should refrain from extending delays by playing the blame-game which unproductively expends energy, so much time and money on personal belittlements and finger pointing rather than fixing the things that need to be fixed.
(5). There also seems a widespread understanding that (a) one or two types of renewable energy will not prove sufficient to meet our long-term National goals; that we’ll need some MIX of several energy sources – solar, wind (with or without battery back-up) , coal, gas, hydro and/or nuclear and (b) such a mix will need to include base load (constant) and variable sources .
(6). Phasing is important. We need both a temporary, bridging plan (certainly inclusive of gas and coal) to get us through to the time when (the yet to be determined) long term solution is built and brought into operation.
The success of the temporary plan is important, indeed critical. If that fails and domestic and business suffer brown or black outs and/or further price hikes …there could well be such a public loss of faith that the future of whatever long-term programme might be jeopardised is decided upon. That outcome, in turn, could encourage our political class to embark on a series of higgledy piggledy, short term band aid solutions that would throw everything, yet again, into confusion.
(7). The public debates we need to have are not ones of a bipolar, simplistic kind, of RENEWABLES or NUCLEAR (the new focus of debate ) or RENEWABLES or FOSSILS …or the simplistic, but all too familiar debates of the GOOD GUY vs BAD GUY (Eggs or Bacon) kind favoured by politicians.
Such faux debates quickly devolve into exaggeration, the selective use of ‘facts’ and lying with statistics. They are unproductive, divisive and confusing. They set back attempts to find optimal, rational and long overdue solutions on what is an issue of national significance.
(8). Ideally there should be – there should have always been – a bi-partisan effort to work out what the ideal mix of energy sources is the best one for Australia. That has never happened in the past. Any chance of it happening now have evaporated since Dutton decided to make nuclear power the battleground on which next year’s election will be fought.
We are back to cheering for Gladiators in the Colosseum .thumbs up or thumbs down contests. We’ve had four such contests in the last year alone – the Voice (result zero), the interest rate/housing battle (lost ), a cost-of-living bout (lost) and yet another series of dating sessions with China (game still in progress).
Now, all of a sudden, we’re off yet again, this time with Don Quixote tilting his lance at windmills while Pancho stands, arms outstretched, in front of revolving blades trying to protect them. This is not the way to run a nation.
(9). Ideally it would the boffins and economists -the INDEPENDENT experts (operating as a consultative body like the Productivity Commission) – who should work out the best options at different price points – and then present them to parliament before publishing their recommendations publicly. That would provide a sound foundation to build on and a good, steadying reference source for voters.
Maybe such a body would take too long to set up to be useful now . Maybe the Productivity Commission could accept (or has accepted?) such a brief maybe ANSTO, AEMC, AEMO or CCA, or other state energy instrumentalities, already perform similar functions for the Ministry for Climate Change and Energy in an ‘in camera’ sought of way that reveals little publicly.
Unfortunately, the much-respected CSIRO has become but a football in this ongoing political game. Independence seems a difficult concept for politicians to accept. That’s not good enough. My understanding of what goes on in these spaces is poor. But no matter what the existing suite of advisory instrumentalities do or don’t do they certainly haven’t communicated much to reassure the public that we (or they )are on the right path.
The public needs reassurance from a credible, objective and openly transparent source (not just agenda pushing politicians and a fight-spruiking media) if consumer/votes are to stay on course for what is going to be a rough ride.
The past performance of our politicians and media in the climate-energy wars suggests they’ve well and truly lost the capacity to fulfil those critical roles. The time is overdue for our political class to act as mature adults, not tantrum prone adolescents. It’s unlikely they’ll make that transition soon – hence the critical importance of an independent, expert umpire.
(10). Voters are pretty powerless to control the dog fight we’ve been thrown into once again. We can, however, make a conscious decision not to respond to the spin and bullshit that’s designed to sway us one way or the other. We can resist the emotionally ‘hot’ but content empty rhetoric, the scare tactics, the ‘believe me’ promises. and the vicious character assassinations. We can be en garde. And we can insist our politicians start acting like statesmen, not vote-brokers.
It’s time to remind our political class that their job is to serve us – that we’re not there to progress their interests.
Chinese hegemonists must by choking on their noodles, laughing and guffawing while they eat and toast the fact they don’t need spies, investment monies or internet saboteurs to bring Australia to its knees. All they have to wait with their feet up and watch our over captained ship of State carefully navigate itself on to the rocks. Liaobuqi!