The election might have earned its early label as a tad boring were it not for what’s at stake. And that’s increasingly alarming as the Trump madness implodes our world view and makes the future as potent with craziness as the man himself.
Mind you we probably needed a shakeup of our inherited complacency because whatever we were doing before certainly wasn’t working. Nothing like the lunatics taking over the asylum to make you appreciate you need to fortify what you care about.
Most interestingly has been how chief contender for the Australian leadership Peter Dutton who’s aligned himself with Trump is doing multiple backflips to now distance himself from Doomsday Man.
His promise to pound Australian people with massive taxes and energy bills to pay for nuclear on behalf of a few Nuke Bros has fallen by the wayside.
Interesting that Trump performed his own Duttonesque backflip on tariffs the moment it became clear his buddies in Russia looked like staring into the economic abyss from which there is no return.
How the pollies, formerly known as “men of steel”, buckle in the heat of what’s going on in the world.
But let’s look at the policies from the pollies at the top of the tree so far. Next week we’ll dig into teal land.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised there’d be $2.3 billion with the Cheaper Home Batteries Program from 1 July, with an upfront 30 per cent discount off the cost of a battery – for those who can afford to go the extra.
Small business and communities can get batteries from between 50 kilowatt-hours to 100 kWh.
About 1 million takers for the scheme are expected and you’d think this would help defuse the volatile antipathy towards transmission lines and wind farms which though couched in reasonable concern for the environment had nefarious beginnings (paid for the fossil fuellers who are so clever but no surprise there given this lot can afford the best corruptible brains in the country.)
With joy the Feds promised those lucky enough to get the batteries could slash bills by 90 per cent. A bit better than the poor sods in the US who went from very low bills to more than $US 600 when the nuclear plant was finally finished in their hood and got operational.
According to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water analysis, households with existing rooftop solar will probably be able to save up to $1100 a year. And those who installing new solar and battery system could save up to $2300 a year. Which is a lot given the average cost of energy these days is a tad over that amount.
According to the government about a third of Aussies now have solar but only one in 40 has a battery. Rewiring Australia chief executive Francis Vierboom told the ABC that the nation’s grid was already more than 40 per cent powered by renewables, making the nation a “perfect fit for battery installation”.
“We get to kind of demonstrate and develop the technologies and business models here that the world is going to be following as they work their way through this transition,” he said
The Smart Energy Council says most households only need between 5 and 15 kWh batteries.
CEO John Grimes said not many people need anything bigger.
According to the SEC there’s a whopping 77 different types of batteries on the market with the cheapest starting at $4000.Batteries between 5 and 10kWh are less than $10,000 before any subsidy.
Grimes said the grid would love it if anything from 1 to 4 million batteries were installed.
He added that solar batteries “take that free energy from the middle of the day and time-shift it to the evening peak period.”
Also on the election card:
- $150 energy bill relief from 1 July
- $1 billion household energy upgrade fund to provide financing to upgrade their appliances to energy efficient ones
- $800 million social housing energy performance initiative keep homes liveable
- $100 million community energy upgrade fund to support energy upgrades like energy efficient lighting and battery storage at sporting fields, libraries and community centres
Controversies
Not everyone was happy of course. The Strata Community Association was quick to say its members were left out of the party. That’s a massive 5 million people who already live in strata titled properties.
See what academic Cathy Sherry says about strata in these pages – she is not impressed.
Strata communities already face huge barriers to electrification the association says and here they are again, left out.
SCA national president Josh Baldwin said, “It’s time for government policy to catch up with how Australians live—starting with equitable access to energy upgrades for strata communities.”
Yep. We agree. Or come up with a better title system.
Peter Dutton has of course attacked the plan, claiming the subsidies would benefit the rich, since he is the nation’s new Robin Hood, adding that the Coalition would work on its home battery plan. Well that is good news and a big improvement on that daft nuclear rubbish he can’t defend and no longer even tries to defend.
Rohan Best, Senior Lecturer of Economics at Macquarie University, wrote in a Conversation article that Dutton makes a good point in arguing that he battery subsidy favours the rich.
“To fix it, Labor should start with lower subsidies – and means test them.” Best wrote. “If they’re not, they could easily go to wealthier households and leave poorer ones behind.”
Another good point: whatever happened to means testing?
Best pointed at state government policies in the 2000s for rooftop solar.
“On one level, this worked well – one third of all Australian households now have solar. But on another, it failed – richer households took up solar subsidies much more than poorer, as my research has shown.
“As solar prices have fallen, this imbalance has partly been corrected.”
We note that the rich have a habit of getting the best things and first.
However, Nigel Freitas, Dominic Perrottet’s former chief of staff and now head of governance at decarbonisation finance provider Brighte, doesn’t agree with that dominant narrative on solar.
He weighed in on social media, saying, “I understand where it’s coming from, it’s not the full story.”
“Solar is in fact a middle Australia success story, the highest adoption rates are in mortgage belt suburbs, where families are cutting their energy bills – and this is where batteries will boom too. Penetration is lower in higher income suburbs.
He added that “battery adoption at scale brings prices down for everyone” and that more consumers are tapping into virtual power plants. While it didn’t take away from the need to address lower incomes, renters and apartments, the policy was “a step in the right direction and is going to shift power to Middle Australia again.”
More in the world of politics
Meanwhile, The Australia Institute sent out an email on Wednesday night with a nicely designed shock headline: “It’s not often I agree with Peter Dutton”, it said, when the latter signposted his retreat on his argument that the nation had a gas shortage.
Peter Dutton’s unveiled gas policy instead acknowledges what teals such as David Pocock and the Greens had been arguing – that the nation has a “gas export problem” The institute’s research found that 80 per cent of the nation’s gas is being sent overseas, making consumers pay triple for what’s left.
Dutton’s solution to this would involve diverting gas production towards Australian households and industries, which would [sic] “raise billions, protect Australians from cost of living pressures and protect the climate from increased emissions”.
The think tank argued that Labor should seize this political moment to rein in the gas industry with the support of the coalition. This left headlines on Thursday morning confused, with ABC’s Politics Now podcast host Patricia Karvelas and David Speers to break down Dutton’s new “far left policy”.
The “left wing think tank” said Speers “certainly applauded this and made the rather clear line that “if you want to tax something, that’s something you want less of”.
“Of course, that’s not exactly what Peter Dutton’s trying to do.
“The Australia Institute and the Greenswant to see far less gas; Peter Dutton wants to see a whole lot more of it.”
Big coalition fundraiser and mining magnate Gina Rinehart revealed to be enraged by the new policy. She owns a stake in Senex, a company that is expanding its gas business in Queensland.
Just earlier this week, Dutton was seeking to grant “natural gas” the same status as “critical minerals”, which would allow the gas industry to access the $4 billion loan facility set up by the government in 2023 to kickstart metals needed for clean energy products and infrastructure.
And go a long way to cementing his buddy boy status with Trump who declared this week that coal was beautiful and clean.
This left mining industry leaders begging for the critical mineral industry to be left alone, with the industry already battling a prolonged downturn in commodity prices and waiting on billions of government investments to be able to one day challenge China’s stranglehold over critical minerals supply.
China is seeing more minerals
In the same vein, the US has gone softer on tariffs – will it, won’t it hold the line – but China won’t be spared and the trade wars are entering stratospheric levels there.
Earlier this month, US tariffs on China rose to 54 per cent, causing China to hit back with its own 34 per cent reciprocal tariffs. And on Thursday, tariffs on Chinese goods now sit at 125 per cent, causing China to hit back with its own 84 per cent tariff on US goods.
China has also put an export restriction on a range of rare earth elements crucial to the US for computer chips, EVs and defence. The US heavily relies on China for rare earth elements, and experts told Time Magazine that the US is years off from its supply chain.
See how that goes!