1 May 2024
Topics: NSW State Government extending the life of Eraring Power Station, statements from Energy Minister Chris Bowen acknowledging the importance of gas, PsiQuantum funding, super for housing
EO&E
Peta Credlin:
Let’s bring in my panel now, Shadow Environment Minister Jonathon Duniam and Senior Fellow at the Menzies Research Centre, Nick Cater. Well welcome, gentleman. Nick, I’ll start with you if I can. These reports, the NSW Government’s working on a deal with Origin Energy to keep Eraring, this is the coal-fired power station, it’s about 25 per cent of the power in NSW comes from it, they want to keep it open beyond its planned closure date of 2025. They weren’t there for another four or five years they say it could cost as much as $150 million a year. Matt Kean, the Liberal, says don’t bail them out, let’s have a giant, big battery. Yeah, please, you’re kidding me, aren’t you? I mean, the battery’s not going to match 25 per cent of NSW power if Eraring is shut down.
Nick Cater:
Matt Kean is off with the fairies, Peta. I mean, you just cannot do it with batteries. And right now, I just checked, it’s a cool evening here in Sydney and Eraring’s pumping out about two gigawatts of very useful electricity. Without that, we’d have blackouts. That’s the bottom line and I don’t know whether it’s in some sort of fantasy land or whatever, but you cannot, you cannot run the grid without base load power, and at the moment that comes from coal, about 65, 70 per cent of the electricity that we use here in NSW. So I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to change that in the space of a year.
Peta Credlin:
And I mentioned his name to remind Liberals in NSW, you do not want him back on the front bench as leader. Alright then, if I can go to you now Senator, Chris Bowen, he has admitted, finally, we need new gas, he says, particularly because we’ve got this bridge left there when renewables are coming in and we still haven’t got baseload backup. He’s gone ahead and greenlit six new, offshore wind projects in Gippsland. Well Gippsland’s in Victoria and he hasn’t, remember that Victoria’s banned gas right down to our gas cooktops. So, how’s he going to square this circle?
Senator Duniam:
Well, if you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when a dog that’s been chasing its tail finally catches it, this is it. It’s madness. There’s no cohesion between State and Federal Labor. There’s no cohesion between Federal Labor last week and Federal Labor this week. As you said earlier in your program, he spent the better part of the last couple of years demonising gas and how evil it is but then reality hits, and they need it to keep the lights on, to keep that manufacturing going. I only have to look at, you know, one of the most incompetent politicians, I believe, in Australia – Lily D’Ambrosio – who took aim at Madeleine King, the Federal Resources Minister, over her support for gas and her comments on it to demonstrate the point you’ve made. He might say we need gas, having demonised it for so long, but there is no way he’s going to be able to get anything past the hard left of the Labor Party anywhere in the country and that is bad for all Australians.
Peta Credlin:
I might add too, a lot of those offshore wind farms are foreign owned, subsidised by poor old Australian taxpayers, profits head offshore. Nick, all this talk about billions more in the budget, this is the Treasurer today, to fast track all of these private sector projects. I think Government does a shocking job of picking winners, rarely works well, and more questions today about the billion dollars handed over to PsiQuantum to build this quantum computer in Brisbane. We find out there’s an involvement of lobbyists connected with Labor. This has a real stench about it.
Nick Cater:
Yeah, stinks to high heaven, Peta, and, you know, it’s not even come under any recognisable or registered government program, it’s just out of the blue. I think it’s wrong. I think this Government is going way off beam with some of the subsidies and assistance it’s offering to businesses. You know, the fact is, if a business can’t get that funding from the private funding from private finance then there’s probably something, almost certainly something very not right about that business plan that they’re operating to. That’s always the way it is. And I think this is dangerous. I think they’re investment in hydrogen is putting good money after bad. They’ve got to change direction on this. If they want to support business, you actually do it through basic things like lowering corporate tax rates and cheap electricity. That’s how you support business, not with subsidies.
Peta Credlin:
Senator Duniam, I think one of the best policies you had the last election was allowing people to get their own super to get into the housing market. But you did it too late, right? Way, way, way too late. There’s a lot of talk today in the media that you’re actually going to be pretty bold here, that you’re going to allow people to access more of their super, and you’re going to announce something pretty soon. What can you tell us?
Senator Duniam:
Well, it would be foolish of me to preannounce anything that might be coming up by way of announcements by anyone on the front bench, including the leader, but certainly there was discussion today following on from the policy at the last election to enable people to access fifty grand of their super, their money, as you point out. And perhaps the idea of enabling people to use their entire super funds to purchase a property. Now, I think we should have a discussion about all options. Labor will rule that one out straight away because, as we know, the unions control the super funds and, of course, are the paymasters of the Government. They don’t want that money going into the pockets of those who own it. So we’ll have that conversation. It’s worth having because we’ve got to deal with affordability, but we also do need to deal with availability. State and local governments need to address land release so we can actually bring more supply on or else prices are never going to taper off and come down to make housing more affordable. So, we’ve got to address both ends, affordability now, that land release so we have availability into the future.
Peta Credlin:
Nick, Senator Duniam, thank you both for your time.