The Morrison Coalition Government
Australia, August 2018 – ?

Ministers in the Morrison Government

Clements Gap Wind Farm Energy Minister Taylor is particularly opposed to wind power having notoriously, and very stupidly, called it 'gobsmackingly inefficient'.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison

Perhaps PM Morrison's biggest lie is in claiming that fossil fuels, coal in particular, are the key to lowering power prices. The fact that renewables are now cheaper than new-build coal fired power stations has been given a huge amount of publicity recently from many sources. Just one is the very recent (at the time of my writing this) article by Steven Long on the ABC Web site, 2018/01/03, "The reality is new coal power is not the answer for cheaper electricity bills". Mr Long wrote:

"The tipping point's been reached: renewable energy is now a cheaper source of power for Australia's future electricity needs than coal."

"The lowest cost replacement for this retiring capacity [Australia's fleet of ageing coal fired power stations] and energy will be a portfolio of resources, including solar (28 gigawatts), wind (10.5 GW) and storage (17 GW and 90 GWh), complemented by 500 megawatts of flexible gas plant and transmission investment."

Environment Minister Melissa Price

Giles Parkinson wrote a piece for RenewEconomy the following day covering the Morrison Government's "breathtakingly stupid response to IPCC climate report" in which the 'Environment Minister' featured strongly.

It seems that Ms Price's credentials to call herself Environment Minister are as good, or bad, as those of Rupert Murdoch's man Graham Lloyd to call himself an Environment Reporter.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor

Chief of staff John Kunkel

The people of Beijing are reminded of what a clear sky looks like Much of the smog is due to the burning of coal Attribution "Feng Li/Getty Images"

Their actions will not even have an economic advantage, there can be no doubt that renewable energy is cheaper than new-build coal. The only groups to win (and then only in the short term) if the Morrison Government slows renewables development and encourages coal will be the coal industry and their puppets in government. Australia and the world will suffer, economically and environmentally.

A life choice

Rats leaving the sinking ship

• Minister for Defence Christopher Pyne;
• Indigenous Affaires Minister Nigel Scullion;
• Jobs Minister Kelly O'Dwyer;
• Human Services Minister Michael Keenan;
• Former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

It would seem likely that these people were motivated by one or a combination of the following reasons:

1. They were fed-up with the culture in the Parliamentary Liberal Party;
2. They could see no future for themselves if they remained with the Parliamentary Liberal Party;
3. They had had enough of the in-fighting in the Parliamentary Liberal Party;
4. They had had enough of the failure of the Parliamentary Liberal Party to act in any way decisively on greenhouse emissions or climate change;
5. They could see that the Liberal-National coalition was very likely to lose the coming election and they didn't want to serve one, or probably more, terms in opposition;
6. They simply saw that their future prospects would be improved by terminating their parliamentary careers.

The Morrison Government is out of touch with the Australian people, out of touch with reality, shamelessly dishonest and doing its best to stop Australia from grasping huge economic opportunities.

What do the Australian people want?

A poll of the people in Energy Minister Taylor's electorate showed that almost twice as many wanted to see Australia decrease its emissions faster, rather than slower.

Blind Freddy could see that there is no future in the coal industry and that Australia's energy future is in renewables but the Morrison Government is trying to deny this great opportunity to Australia.

Plainly the Australian people want renewable energy, not more coal power.
Plainly the Australian people want action on climate change.
Plainly the world's and Australia's future is with renewable energy not fossil fuels.

By the time of writing it was clear that renewable energy in the forms of wind and solar PV was cheaper than new-built coal-fired power. As decarbonisation becomes more urgent any coal-fired power station is likely to have a short life, further eroding its financial justification. No company is interested in building a coal-fired power station, it would simply be incapable of competing economically with renewables. The only way a new coal-fired power station will be built in Australia is with heavy subsidisation from the Australian tax-payers, and they plainly do not want it.

Has there ever been a federal government more out of touch with what the Australian people want, what is best for Australia and what the world needs?

I've written about who wants renewable energy? elsewhere on this site.

Nyngan solar farm At the time of my visit, April 2017, I believe this was the biggest solar farm in Australia, at 102MW.

The potential for economic growth in the energy sector is with renewables, not fossil fuels

I've written below of just one renewable energy project that has huge economic potential that, if the Morrison Government had its way, would probably not go ahead. Fortunately, like so many other renewable energy developments, it seems likely to happen in spite of the best efforts of the federal government to halt progress.

South Australia has shown very well that wind power can provide about half of an electricity supply with minimal changes to a power grid. The nation is seeing that solar PV power can also generate substantial percentages of the electricity that the Australian people want and need. At the time of writing utility-scale solar PV power installations are being built at a great rate.

German ambassador's visit On 2019/02/26 Shannon Beattie wrote an article in the West Australian about the German Ambassador, Dr Anna Prinz, who visited Karratha to learn about the hydrogen-producing potential of the Pilbara region. She intends to visit again.

In the Pilbara the Asian Renewable Energy Hub project, backed by the Macquarie Group and with a value of $22 billion, has been proposed with the intention of exporting electricity by undersea cable to Java and possibly Singapore.

At the time of writing there are a number of pilot projects around Australia testing the economic viability of using our abundant renewable energy to produce clean hydrogen. Hydrogen can be exported as a gas or it can easily be converted into ammonia which can be exported or used for many purposes including the production of fertilisers; and ammonia can be converted back into hydrogen after exporting, if required. There seems to be strong optimism in the energy industry that if clean hydrogen is not yet economically very competitive it soon will be.

Again at the time of writing, Energy Minister Angus Taylor, who seems to have an ideological hatred of wind power, was holding up a feasibility study for what could be Australia's first off-shore wind farm, The Star of the South.

The Morrison Government has turned its back on these current and future industries because they don't involve coal.

With any new industry the advantage is with the early adopters; the Morrison Government has not provided any support for the development of these innovative projects, thus allowing Australia's competitors a head start.

Change in terawatt-hours generated in the National Electricity Market between 2008 and 2018. Image credit: Simon Holmes à Court, The Guardian

In spite of the best efforts of the recent coalition governments, from the Abbott Government starting in September 2013 to the MorrisonGov.html, doing all they can to support the coal industry and slow the growth of sustainable energy, renewables have made great inroads into power generation in Australia.

Quoting Simon Holmes à Court in the Guardian article that published the graph:

"Highly polluting brown coal use is down 36.6% and black coal (still dirty!) has fallen 9.4%, mostly replaced by wind and solar."

These governments have been nothing short of criminal in their opposition to action on climate change, but fortunately they have been notably ineffectual in their efforts to stop the transition to renewable energy.

PM Turnbull was forced into allowing a royal commission into the financial industries and it uncovered a huge amount of exploitative, even criminal, behaviour.

I suspect that a federal ICAC would unearth just as much sculduggery as did the royal commission on the financial industries.

Of course Scomo doesn't want an ICAC, it would uncover his misdeeds and those of others in or close to government.

For more information see The Chaser.

Sundrop Farms – the 40 MW solar thermal installation that powers a huge greenhouses at Port Augusta If Scomo really wanted to do some good for reducing emissions he would make sure that the proposed Aurora Solar Reserve solar thermal power station with energy storage project went ahead at Port Augusta. Photo taken by my drone 2016/03/14

The Emissions Reduction Fund renamed as the Climate Solutions Fund

"The government has put a new name on an existing scheme, while steadfastly refusing to learn from mistakes made along the way. In cruder terms, it’s slapped a gleaming coat of lipstick onto a pig of a policy."

Giving money supposedly aimed at reducing emissions to companies so that they can burn more fossil fuels

Paying a foreign-owned company to burn gas

As part of their Emissions Reduction Fund (rebadged a "Climate Solutions" fund) the Morrison Government announced that it was giving a million dollars of taxpayers' money to South African-owned gold miner Gold Fields to pay for a gas turbine powered electricity generator.

The gold miner stated that they would have built the gas turbine anyway.

If the Morrison Government really wanted to reduce emissions or find climate solutions they would have encouraged Gold Fields to build a solar farm or wind farm rather than installing a gas turbine.

Paying Rio Tinto to burn diesel

“Rio Tinto is one of the world’s largest companies. It is disturbing that it will receive what looks to amount to several million dollars from government climate change programs to switch from burning one fossil fuel to another."

The Morrison Government is blocking a project that will cost the taxpayers nothing but will reduce emissions by about five million tonnes annually.

I have written about Minister Taylor and his hatred of wind power in particular on another page on this site.

Others, such as British Billionaire Sanjeev Gupta (who is investing $1 billion in renewable energy in Australia), famous investor Warren Buffet (who has invested $1 billion in renewables) and Macquarie Bank (which has invested more than $20 billion in green energy globally) and who are backing the proposed $22 billion Asian Renewable Energy Hub can see that the future is green, sustainable and clean.

Peter Williams wrote a piece for the West Australian on 2018/10/08 about the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH). Its scale is truely breathtaking:

• A total installed capacity of 11 GW+ (average electricity consumption for the whole of NSW on the national grid is about 8 GW);
• More than 1400 wind turbines, more than 7.5 GW (more than ten times the size of the largest existing wind farm in Australia);
• More than 3.5 GW of solar generation (more than ten times the size of the biggest solar farm currently in Australia).

Incredibly, Energy Minister Angus Taylor is on record as saying that wind turbines are "gobsmackingly inefficient". This is the depth to which the quality of our government has sunk!

Coal power stations have been unreliable Contrary to the claims made by PM Morrison and the rest of the coal lobby the record shows that coal fired power stations are not reliable. On average there was one break down every three days in an Australian coal fired power station during 2018; with the misleadingly named HELE (in truth neither High-Efficiency nor Low-Emissions) power stations failing more often than older black-coal fired stations.

Has this clarified anything? I doubt it.

In any case, PM Morrison seems to be under the misunderstanding that coal power is dispatchable, of course it is not. Coal power is base load, that is, coal power is suited for providing electricity at a steady rate; dispatchable power is, as the name suggests, capable of being dispatched as required.

PM Morrison likes to make statements implying that coal-fired power stations are available all the time; ignoring the fact that they are typically unavailable about 15% of the time due to maintenance or breakdown.

What actually resulted was a Labor landslide; very unusually there was a huge 4.8% swing toward the Government; if there are big swings they are more often than not against a sitting government. The morning after the election it was looking like Labor would get 55 seats in the 88-seat Lower House.

No one was in any doubt that federal politics had a big influence on the Victorian result; the policies of the Morrison Government had a lot to do with this devastation of the Victorian Liberal/National coalition.

What do the Australian people want?

Peterborough Solar Farm Photo taken with my drone, 2018/05/12

A poll of the people in the Morrison Government's Energy Minister Angus Taylor's electorate showed that almost twice as many wanted to see Australia decrease its emissions faster, rather than slower.

A poll carried out by a local newspaper concerning a proposed energy park (wind, solar, storage) near my house indicated 83% support for the project.

Blind Freddy could see that there is no future in the coal industry and that Australia's energy future is in renewables but PM Morrison and Minister Taylor is trying to deny this great opportunity to Australia.

Plainly the Australian people want renewable energy, not more coal power.
Plainly the Australian people want action on climate change.
Plainly Mr Taylor is out of touch with what the people in his electorate want.
Plainly the world's and Australia's future is with renewable energy not fossil fuels.

Has there ever been a federal government more out of touch with what the Australian people want, what is best for Australia and what the world needs?

I've written about how I see Australia's energy future and who wants renewable energy elsewhere on this site.

Another problem is that any nation that spends more money than can be reasonably justified on armaments causes mistrust among it neighbours. They wonder whether aggression is being seriously considered.

At the time I wrote this section of this page Australia faced no more credible outside threats than most other nations.

While it ranked 53rd in population among the world's nations Forbs ranked it 12th in arms spending. Among the 15 nations with the highest arms spending there were only four that spent more per capita on arms than Australia: in order of decreasing per capita arms spending these were the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the USA.

Money that is spent on armaments is not available for education, health, emissions reduction, infrastructure, welfare and many other desirable services. The quality of life of the nation's people is degraded unnecessarily.

While this bill sounds perfectly reasonable to most people, it was very important because it passed in spite of being opposed by the Morrison Government. "It's the first time in 90 years that a sitting government has lost a vote on its own legislation" (The Guardian).

Following the historical defeat in parliament PM Morrison immediately started a scare campaign foreshadowing an invasion by refugees organised by people-smugglers.

It would suit the Morrison Government very well if a couple of boat-loads of refugees were to turn up on an Australian shore.

Considering the total lack of ethical standards shown by the Morrison Government (and partly documented on this page) we should not be surprised if they or there supporters were to pay people smugglers to ship some refugees to Australia.

On this site...

Australia's energy future

End of coal: why the coal industry has a very limited future.

Ethics: a subject that many in the Morrison government would do well to learn about.

A green or a black future

Greenhouse/climate change: the greatest threat currently facing mankind.

Killer coal: how the burning of coal kills millions of people world-wide each year.

Selfishness or altruism?: self or all?

South Australia's success in changing toward renewable energy

Stop These Things; a very dishonest anti-wind power Web site admired by, and contributed to by, Mr Taylor

Who wants renewable energy?

Why accept climate science

Why support wind power

Wind power lies; Mr Taylor features strongly

Wind power opposition: almost universally dishonest.

External links...

Adam Morton wrote a piece for The Guardian, 2019/03/01, titled "Out on its own: Australia the only country to use climate funding to upgrade coal-fired plants".

RenewEconomy, Lip service and lies: Coalition’s response to the IPCC report; written by Joshua S Hill, 2018/10/12.

RenewEconomy, the Morrison Government's "breathtakingly stupid response to IPCC climate report", by Giles Parkinson, 2018/10/09.

Xihhua is one of many news organisations that have reported on British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta's statement that he can show that renewable are cheaper than coal for electricity generation.

The Conversation factcheck, 2017/08/14, concluded that while power from existing coal-fired power stations is cheaper than new-built wind power, "as things stand today – wind power would be cheaper than coal as a new-build source of electricity." Prices for wind and particularly solar PV power continue to fall.

The Conversation reported that "Big firms voice lack of faith in ‘cumbersome’ and ‘impractical’ Emissions Reduction Fund", while Environment Minister Melissa Price wanted to continue with it.