The Morrison Coalition Government
Australia, August 2018 – ?

What matters in regard to Australia and climate change action?

Australia ranked last of 58 nations in climate policy The Climate Change Performance Index for 2020 ranked Australia last of all 58 countries rated for climate policy. It was the only nation to receive a score of zero out of 100, the second lowest scoring nation, the USA, received a score of 2.8.

I suggest they don't, what matters is this:

• Is Australia doing all it can to save the planet from climate disaster?
• Is it doing its share as a nation?
• Is it doing as much as it can without adversely impacting its economy?
• Is it doing as much as it is ethically obliged to do?

• Australia ranks 53^rd in the world in population, but sixth in the world in the CO₂ produced by its electricity industry;
• Australia has 0.3% of the world's population, but produces 1.2% of the world's greenhouse gasses;
• Australia's per-capita greenhouse gas emission rate is about 17 tonnes per annum, more than three times the world average, which is about 5 tonnes per annum.
• If Australia's fossil fuel exports are taken into consideration the nation is responsible for about 3.6% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Australia's emissions intensity (as distinct from total emissions) over the last decade or so has decreased because of the rise of renewable energy generation. No thanks to Prime Ministers Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison or Energy Minister Angus Taylor. The Coalition has fought against the adoption of renewables all along. The federal Labor party under Anthony Albanese is little better. Both major parties are blinded by the short-term profits and political donations coming from the coal industry.

This seems to apply particularly to those nations whose governments tried to give the impression that fossil fuel industries had a strong future when, in fact, they have a very shaky future. Plainly, the Australian government is one such.

The Morrison government has heavily promoted coal mining in Australia, continually trying to convince investors that 'coal has a bright future'. If the industry collapses, due to forced action on reducing emissions, the Australian tax-payer, through the Reserve Bank of Australia, may well be held accountable for the highly misleading statements made by the government.

Clare polling booth, 2019/05/18 School kids Niamh and Emma asking for the world that they will inherit to be protected

They're back, 2019/05/20

This was a surprise to most Australians, including the experts.

The Liberal/National coalition had help from the filthy-rich coal billionaire Clive Palmer and the shamelessly biased and pro-coal Murdoch media empire.

Palmer's party ran a candidate in every seat in what Palmer said following the election was a campaign aimed only at keeping Labor from winning government. The Palmer party didn't get any of its candidates elected, but may well have taken a lot of votes from Labor.

The election was largely won in Queensland where there were enough voters placing more importance on jobs in the coal industry than on the future of the planet to swing the balance of power to the COALition.

The Yorke Peninsula Country Times of 2020/02/04 stated:

"It has been revealed Copper Coast Council should not have been eligible for its $2million of funding through the controversial Drought Communities Programme – Extension. The government awarded funding to CCC, and several other councils, despite them not meeting criteria relating to employment in the agriculture, forestry and fishery industries."

More rorts come to light

No guidelines. No tender process. No application form. Some recipients didn't know they'd even been given money until they read about it in the local paper.

And at $150 million, it's worth more than the scandal-plagued community sports grants program that cost the ministerial career of former Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie.

Projects funded under the so-called Female Facilities and Water Safety Stream (FFWSS) were even more heavily skewed towards Coalition-held marginal seats than the controversial sports grants program it was meant to complement.

And rather than being a nationwide program aimed at encouraging women in sport – as Prime Minister Scott Morrison and then-sports minister Senator McKenzie claimed – the great majority of funding has been pledged towards swimming pools in just 11 Coalition-held seats.

PM Morrison and Senator Cormann mislead parliament

"a Senate inquiry heard that nearly half the projects funded in the so-called sports rorts affairs were ineligible.

On Thursday, audit officials told a Senate inquiry that 43 per cent of projects funded under the Coalition's $100 million program were not eligible for funding".

This was at least the second time that PM Morrison has mislead parliament. He had to send a letter to the Speaker to amend incorrect comments that he made while defending his dishonest Energy Minister Angus Taylor back in November of 2019. For more information on this see the article written by Brett Worthington for the ABC.

Many of the world's religious leaders are demanding more action on climate change, they seem to think that God would want his creation to be protected.

But PM Morrison is not in a main-stream church, he's Pentecostal, so rational argument doesn't seem to apply.

Does PM Morrison see climate change damage as God's will?

What hope is there if any of our leaders think in ways like this and if the Australian people continue to elect such leaders?

The delusions of the man who will be in charge of our country for the next three years are terrifying

PM Morrison's stance in looking after the fossil fuel industries at the expense of life on earth is criminal, selfish and extremely shortsighted. Most Australians want serious action on climate change and natural justice demands serious action on climate change, but Morrison is fighting against action. Morrison cannot see past trying to prop up the dying coal industry in return for more donations to the Liberal Party.

The ABC's political reporter Nour Haydar wrote a piece on 2019/11/01 headlined "Scott Morrison to slam environmental groups 'targeting' businesses with 'selfish' secondary boycotts".

PM Morrison's concern that so-called secondary boycotts (boycotting a company that supports polluting industries) may have serious consequences for the Australian economy should give heart to climate change activists; keep up the good work people, you are having an impact.

Last ditch scare campaign

They were claiming that Labor would wreak the economy (in their six years in government the Coalition had not had a single budget surplus), but perhaps their most dishonest claim was that Labor's renewable energy target of 50% by 2030 would be cripplingly expensive. South Australia went from near zero renewable energy in 2003 to over 50% by 2018 at practically no cost to the tax payers. Why shouldn't Australia be able to do something similar?

Not only could Labor's targets be reached at little cost to the taxpayers, but they would provide a boost to the economy and provide thousands of jobs. See the 2019 Clean Energy Australia Report by the Clean Energy Council.

Labor is also promising to reduce Australia’s pollution by 45 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. While Labor's aims are less than is needed they are far better than the Coalition's energy/emissions/climate-change-action paralysis of the last six years.

The future of the planet and everybody's children and grandchildren is at stake.

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

Energy Minister Angus Taylor

Natural Disasters Minister Littleproud

Josh Frydenberg expresses his hatred of renewable energy by defying everyone, and good sense, to block two wind turbines

Great Barrier Reef Special Envoy, Warren Entsch

He went on to complain about adults "coaching" young people who quite rightly expressed deep concern for their, and the planet's, future. He said of the adults "They're frightening the living hell out of kids. It's like child abuse and I think they should be held accountable". If there was any justice in this world people like Warren Entsch would be held accountable.

This government seems hell-bent on destroying the future that these kids will live through.

Chief of staff John Kunkel

"The award of funding reflected the approach documented by the minister's office of focusing on 'marginal' electorates held by the Coalition as well as those electorates held by other parties or independent members that were to be 'targeted' by the Coalition at the 2019 election...

Applications from projects located in those electorates were more successful in being awarded funding than if funding was allocated on the basis of merit assessed against the published program guidelines."

Shortly before I wrote this section the PM has called for an examination to see if there has been any "breach of ministerial standards". One could only conclude that if this has not breached ministerial standards then those standards must be very lax.

Whether or not anything illegal was done or whether the ministerial standards have been breached, there can be no doubt at all that the actions of Ms McKenzie were unethical, but the Morrison government seems to place little, if any, weight on ethical standards.

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. Australia's future is with the renewable energy industry, not with polluting coal.

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, 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.

The Hornsdale Power Reserve has been a huge and very valuable success in stabilising the Australian power grid

“By all means, have the world’s biggest battery, have the world’s biggest banana, have the world’s biggest prawn like we have on the roadside around the country, but that is not solving the problem,”

What he demonstrated with this statement was his shameful and criminal devotion to the fossil fuel industry and his contempt for the truth and ethical standards.

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.

An era when Australia dared to have a vision

“You should read this tale of an era when Australia dared to have a vision”.

By the way, the book is a good read.

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.

Sediment in Crystal Brook following the Bangor fire The Bangor fire was finally extinguished by 60 mm of rain. At Crystal Brook, where this photo was taken, many kilometres downstream of the burned land, the ash and silt (grey in this photo) was conspicuous. Photo 2014/02/15

From an article in Scientific American, June 2011.

"If climate change drives temperature up a degree or two," goes the common dismissal, "how bad could that be?"

Here's an example: Higher temperatures draw moisture out of live and dead trees and brush, making them more flammable. The heat also can alter precipitation ... lengthening the fire season. A one degree Celsius climb in average global temperature could cause the median area burned annually by wildfires in parts of the American West to increase up to sixfold.

If global warming will make the US forests more flammable, it will do the same thing in Australia.

Bangor fire, South Australia, 2014

The photo on the right is of debris including soil and ash left in the Crystal Brook in the town of the same name. The upper parts of the Crystal Brook catchment were burned in the Bangor fire.

The native vegetation will recover to a large extent in a few years following a fire like this, but the soil will take hundreds or thousands of years to be replaced.

Increased frequency and ferocity of fires will be disastrous for Australia's fragile soils.

Smoke plume between Australia and New Zealand The brown area to the southeast of Australia is a smoke plume being blown across the Tasman sea from the exceptional fires in New South Wales.

While the fires were not directly caused by climate change the conditions that lead to the fires were certainly made far more likely due to climate change. Australia had been suffering from drought for several years; this, like the fires, was likely linked to climate change. The drought also made the fires worse than they would otherwise have been because the land being burned was exceptionally dry.

Smoke levels in Sydney in particular were high enough to be hazardous to health; they were also high in Melbourne and Canberra for weeks. As can be seen in the satellite photo on the right the smoke plume was blowing right across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand; smoke from Australia's bushfires was also reported in South America.

Luke Henriques-Gomes wrote an article about the fires in The Guardian dated 2019/12/31. Many others were available on the Internet.

At the time of writing more catastrophic fire danger weather was being forecast for 2020/01/04 in NSW.

Dust too

And smoke

"the terrible air quality is unmatched in terms of severity, duration and extent."

Sea level rise threat to Pacific islands

GetUp attacked by Morrison government

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