As Labor and Liberal Parties shadow-box between themselves like the worst fake WWE show imagined, Australia's energy woes are growing on steroids with prices for electricity doubling in just the past decade.
Australians now pay 4 times more than households in the USA for electricity. The rising cost of energy has reached a point where many are waking up and realising this money grab by heartless corporate giants is unsustainable.
We even pay more for power than the countries who buy the huge quantities of fossil fuels we export! The Chinese consumer, for instance, only pays a fraction of the price that ordinary Australians pay and that's after shipping the coal all the way over to China!
Tens of thousands of residents across Australia are not just struggling to pay their electricity bills, moreover, they have given up altogether and power has been cut to their humble homes by the energy masters to punish them.
If nothing substantial is done soon to bring electricity prices down significantly or at least halt them for a lengthy period (perhaps years), this own goal of economic retardation by our elected members will affect generations.
How politicians have caused electricity prices to spiral out of control
The political system in Australia is currently paralysed by a conviction-less Liberal National Coalition, an opportunistic Labor Opposition, and a self-indulgent narcissistic Senate (upper house). The Australian people are completely confused about who to vote for and what their vote will do – if anything – to pull the country out of deep debt and help them pay for basic utilities. Election cycle after election cycle, Australian politicians have been focused on themselves, minority ideology, and identity politics instead of concentrating on the big issues facing the majority of everyday citizens. Any major economic reform or BIG bold ideas to stop the inevitable slide into financial hell gets whittled away and horse traded through the parliament until the end result is literally impotent.
The incredible rise in electricity prices in Australia is just one illustration of how politicians can drive their constituents off a cliff with both hands on the steering wheel whilst looking straight ahead and acting like everything is under control. It's terrible to watch this see-through charade of parliamentarians virtue signalling through their elected term without actually effecting real change for the better.
Ideology. Here's a good example of how politicians have contributed to the high cost of energy in Australia, Jay Wilson Weatherill (the South Australian Premier) couldn't have been more wrong and deceitful when he stated just a few days ago, "we've been screwed for too long by large power companies, it's as simple as that."
Premier Weatherill was right to claim the energy crisis is "simple" but he was wrong about the "that" part. It's simple because it's easy to explain how we got into this mess but he's wrong to totally blame the electricity companies when in fact his government is mostly to blame.
Over the past 10 years, both Federal and State governments in Australia have known the energy affordability crisis was coming but failed to do anything about it. The reason why they failed to act is simple – they didn't have the political guts to fight against toxic ideologies pushed by powerful lobby groups and the Main Stream Media (MSM) because they feared losing power (pardon the pun).
In other words, politicians not only turned a blind eye to rising power prices they actively inflated them by implementing policies to make electricity generation more expensive. And now that power generation plants are closing down because regulations make them too expensive to maintain, politicians are scrambling to deflect blame whenever the grid goes down due to lack of baseload power.
Fancy that… Australia, the richest natural resources country in the world running out of electricity – well done!
In Weatherill's case his Government gleefully followed leftist ideologies and wacky green policies forcing the premature death of fossil fuels in South Australia. Weatherill spent millions of taxpayers dollars on solar and wind energy farms. He blew up power stations to much fan fair and cheers from the MSM and he even smugly announced how his State was a test case for renewable energy as if his policies were the way to go, the light to follow, and the example to all.
Well, we know how that all turned out for South Australia… Not only is it the axe murder capital of Australia, but now it's also frequently plunged into darkness due to Statewide blackouts – how scary is that!? Seriously, South Australia is no longer self-sufficient in energy so it has to bludge power off its neighbouring State Victoria whenever peak demand requires. And what is the Weatherill Government doing about its electricity crisis? Get this, they're going to build the world's biggest battery! Yes that's right, a humungous battery possibly made by Tesla's Elon Musk himself so they can store power to use when the lights go off again. They'll probably name it the Eveready Weatherill Battery Solution.
Privatisation. Privatising electricity assets isn't just a Labor State Government mistake. Campbell Newman's LNP Government in Queensland after winning a landslide victory to defeat Labor made a fatal error when he tried to sell the grid resulting in a shock election loss 3 years later after just one term. Some may think there were more issues than just "privatisation" that sunk Newman? I beg to differ… Don't underestimate how fed up voters are with bill shock as they walk back from their letter box shaking heads.
Western Australia's Liberal Government's recent election landslide loss to Labor has been credited to "it's time" and "a well-run Labor campaign" but that's complete BS because the truth is the Liberal leader Colin Barnett also went to the poll with an idiotic policy to privatise the electricity grid. The MSM neglected to give much weight to electricity privatisation as a factor in the Liberals losing government but you bet it was a major issue at the ground roots.
Market interference. Successive Federal Governments both Labor and Liberal are now in the business of picking winners and losers in the commercial sphere when it comes to energy.
Picking favourites in the energy market especially when conflicted by ideology is a bad policy by any government and bound to end in tears. Natural progression and market forces is a safer way to go so that change is gradual and logical for the consumer. If solar and wind are to be the next best and cheapest form of energy then let it evolve that way on its own.
But of course, a good ideologically driven campaign will always create anxiety in modern politics with grown men and women politicians reduced to bed wetting at the command of the MSM especially if the billion dollar ABC public broadcaster is against you. Therefore, governments either spring into action like Labor did by introducing a carbon tax or act like they're acting such as the succeeding Coalition Government's direct action policy.
Environment versus electricity prices
Now, I love the environment as much as anyone and if you follow my content online you know how passionate I am about nature, the outdoors, and lifestyle. I'm an advocate against pollution and I practically preach about clean living, organic growing, and environmental protection.
However, I also consider myself a realist and in some ways a sceptic of things that are presented to me with glaring grey areas. In my opinion, the argument that climate change is real, fossil fuels are to blame, and the situation so serious immediate radical action needed to be taken has not been made very well. The fact that climate change has not been proven definitively smells like ideology to me.
That said, whether you are a "man-made" climate change denier or not, shouldn't stop any reasonable person from caring about the environment and wanting the Earth to be as clean and unpolluted as possible. But we need to be aware that sensible rules and regulations should be introduced to facilitate this end goal otherwise going over the top will produce the opposite effect.
If we make energy too expensive, people will revolt and revert back to uncleaner alternatives such as burning rubbish and wood to cook a meal or keep warm. Is that what we want – to go backwards into the third world? According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) 3 billion people still cook inside their homes by burning stuff on an open fire causing 3.8 million premature deaths each year from inhaling soot. Cheap electricity via coal fired power stations is and will be the only solution for many years to come. Renewable energy on a large scale, such as solar, is not viable yet and won't be for a long time, however, that's not to say we can't support or promote its growth we just should be sensible about it.
When people can't afford to pay their bills they will stop caring about anything beyond themselves. Once you break people and their dignity is lost they will bring down society around them to share in their misery. The best we can do to keep our environment clean and healthy (or prevent "manmade climate change") is to improve technology at a natural pace – not forced through taxes or gross regulation and more importantly look after our people.
Solution to rising electricity prices
Return the grid to the State.
I'm not a socialist (far from it) but I do believe it is important for a government to own certain assets and services, particularly those that help to sustain civilisation such as electricity, water, refuse/waste collection, health, and even communications to an extent. Without these fundamentals being available at affordable cost to ALL people within the community all sorts of negative social issues will emerge.
The capitalistic market is huge it doesn't need to own the power grid to survive and I am not for a second convinced by the concept that selling off electricity networks lowers energy prices due to market competition – that is an absolute lie. Think about it for a second… Apply the capitalist rule of more competition keeps prices in check… How many electricity grids are there? One? That's right. Therefore, if that grid is privately owned it will always be driven for profit and the prices stemming from that one provider will always be rigged even if the end consumer has multiple re-sellers to choose from…
I don't buy the argument that the State will eventually not be able to afford to run power stations and maintain the poles and wires. Just like hospitals and schools, the State will find a way to afford the costs of power generation and keep providing it to the household at reasonable prices – subsidised if need be. It's also a matter of priority and where government should really spend taxpayers money but let's not digress into that pit of ridiculousness in this article.
Open up more gas fields and coal mines.
Cut red tape, introduce legislation to make it lawful to sell Australia's own fossil fuels back to Australians cheaper, and stop serial green group pests from continuously lodging block court proceedings as a tactic to choke off mining businesses until they give up on their commercial enterprises.
Cheaper energy is great for the economy! Low electricity prices would no doubt create more wealth, more jobs, and in turn more revenue for governments.
It's incredible that ideology is retarding the better judgement of our current politicians, at the moment anyway. Politicians (like Nick Xenophon) tinkering around the edges and "winning" once off small monetary handouts of $75 to needy pensioners to "help" pay their power bills is like putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound – it's a gesture but it really solves nothing.
Buy back the grid from these greedy power companies, dig up more of our resources for domestic use, and return the power to the people! This can all be done with nil effect on the environment or world climate.
Conclusion
It's heartbreaking to know pensioners are freezing through winter and dying of heat exhaustion through summer because they are petrified of using electricity in their homes.
It's sad to know young people can't accumulate enough money for a house or car deposit and get ahead in life because their power bill decimates their quarterly savings.
It's life changing when a person loses their job because a business can't afford the running costs and has to either shed staff or close.
And, it's disgusting that our politicians are frozen by ideology whilst they watch this train smash happen to the people who rely on them.
Feel free to give your opinion.
