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Electrification Overhaul: The Costly Future of Australia’s Energy Strategy

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Electrification is an essential component of the Albanese government’s net zero strategy. It involves turning every device that consumes energy to electric: replacing petrol cars with electric vehicles, swapping gas cook tops for electric ones, removing gas hot-water systems in favour of electric, and even making barbecues electric. Everyday Australians will bear the costs of this insanity. To me, it’s unwise to place all our eggs in the electricity basket when we are reimagining our grid to depend entirely on weather-dependent generation. Yet, to the government, such heresy is “disinformation.”

Achieving electrification will require a massive upgrade to our electricity transmission network to meet the higher demand, especially from electric vehicles. However, even this alone will not achieve electrification, as there just isn’t enough generation capacity from wind and solar to ever meet the heightened demand. Consequently, the government is pursuing companion strategies.

First, people will be incentivised to purchase wall batteries to go with their rooftop solar systems, which will connect to the grid. To manage evening and morning peak demand, the government plans to draw power from these batteries, restricting users from operating power-intensive appliances like air conditioners and pool pumps.

If you have an EV, this strategy means the power stored in your wall battery—intended for overnight charging—will also be taken. There’s even a plan to plug EVs directly into the grid to draw any charge you may have managed to store in your battery if required to keep the grid working.

This won’t be enough on its own, so the government has introduced a new building code mandatory for new homes, which will add about $50,000 to construction costs. These changes include completely sealing homes to keep heat out, which may lead to moisture build up and mould.

Ceiling fans will replace air-conditioners, while rooms and homes will become smaller, ceilings lower and spaces more compact, with no garages and narrower streets, as people will not have cars.

Welcome to your future under electrification. Watch the video for more on this madness.

Transcript

Electrification is an essential part of the Albanese government’s net zero strategy. Electrification consists of taking every device that consumes energy and making it electric: petrol cars replaced with electric cars; gas cooktops replaced with electric ones; gas hot-water systems ripped out and replaced with electric; barbecues only electric—which is no fun at all. Everyday Australians pay the cost. 

To me, it’s unwise to put all our eggs in the electricity basket when we are reimagining our electricity grid to rely entirely on weather-dependent generation. To the government, of course, such heresy is mere ‘disinformation’. I’m sure Minister Bowen is champing at the bit to declare any online critics of net zero as threatening the environment, leading to a ban on ‘disinformation’. 

The truth is that electrification is something we must debate. There are real risks to the public, and the price tag is astronomical. So let’s start with safety. The internet is reporting that China has banned electric vehicles from underground car parks, following a Daily Telegraph story on the weekend. The inference is that the ban was from the government, when in fact the Telegraph made clear the ban was from car-park owners and from apartments above the car parks. It’s businesses acting to protect themselves and their customers. Local news reports that property owners were spurred into action after 11 intense battery fires in Hangzhou. The reports have revived fears in China that the new low-carbon-dioxide technology is more trouble than it’s worth. Definitely—yes, it is. One viral social media post involved a Hangzhou car showroom catching fire after a display car spontaneously combusted. It was a brand-new vehicle. There was no issue of faulty maintenance or handling. As has been correctly reported, the science is clear: ‘when EV batteries do overheat, they’re susceptible to something called thermal runaway,’ says Edith Cowan University academic Muhammad Zhar. This article goes on to say: 

That’s when physical damage— 

or a manufacturing fault— 

triggers a chemical chain reaction within the battery. 

It can be a short circuit. It can be a puncture. Or an external heat. 

Such damage can lead to a high-temperature fire or toxic gas explosion. 

“About 95 per cent of battery fires are classed as ignition fires, which produce jet-like directional flames. The other 5 per cent involve a vapour cloud explosion.” 

That was written by Edith Cowan University academic Muhammad Azhar. 

Recently, five cars were destroyed when a damaged battery fell from an EV parked at Sydney airport. A Tesla went up in flames on the road after contacting debris that fell from a truck near Goulburn. No ways have been developed of smothering a lithium-ion fire. The safest place for an EV is in the open air, where any fire can be contained until it burns out without destroying the property of others in the process. 

Secondly, when it comes to electrification, the elephant in the room is cost. The process consists of rebuilding the national electricity grid, generation and transmission. Energex and Powerlink have identified emerging limitations in the electricity networks supplying the Brisbane CBD. The power grids in Brisbane and across Australia were not built for our modern population density and certainly weren’t built to take the full load of energy that’s now required to electrify houses, cars and businesses. They note corrective action is required to avoid network overload and to avoid load shedding—known as ‘brownout’—which is when the power is selectively switched off to houses and businesses to prevent a wider blackout. Smart meters will make brownouts easier, providing the ability for power companies to remotely turn off air-conditioners and power to living areas, leaving the kitchen circuit functioning to keep the fridge on. New houses are being built with that circuit arrangement. It’s control. 

The cost to rewire the grid to convey solar, wind and pumped hydro from the point of generation to the cities and then rewire the city and suburban grid for the higher electricity demand has not been costed. I have asked the minister repeatedly in the last few weeks for those costings, and it is clear that none exist. Let me help the government. Visual Capitalist consultancy has done independent costings showing that the cost of rewiring the grid and adding firming—back-up batteries and pumped hydro—is about 30 per cent of the overall electrification cost, or $300 billion, on the consensus figure of Australia’s $1 trillion cost—which I think is about half of it. 

In the electrification agenda, cost concerns relate to the national building code. The idea is to avoid having to rewire at least parts of the grid through lowering household electricity usage to make room for charging EVs in the existing power grid. The targeted production is 50 per cent less power—half of what you’re using. Remember that Australians are already using 10 per cent less power than five years ago. The Australian Building Codes Board has a rating system called NatHERS which rates housing standards from one star to 10 stars. The current code requires seven stars. The code includes a measure of whole-of-house energy efficiency, which rates your home compliance with a net zero ideology, including heating and cooling, hot water systems, lighting, pool and spa pumps, cooking and even plug-in appliances. Our Big Brother is poking their nose into every aspect of your home in the name of saving the environment. 

The actual building code component of the building code calls for the sealing of homes to prevent outside air coming in. This creates issues with condensation, meaning mould, which other aspects of the code may alleviate—may. Clearly nobody involved in this new code has lived in a Queenslander-style home that relies on airflow to keep the house cool. The new ideology-driven code will add $50,000 to the cost of construction of a new home, partially offset through lower electricity costs. The reduction in electricity costs will not be a lot because your energy bill is composed mainly of a fee for poles and wires, margin fees and admin fees, not electricity usage. As I have explained, the poles and wires charge is going higher than Elon Musk’s spaceship. 

The cost of the new code to everyday Australians will be massive. We have 11 million homes in Australia and, so far, only recently built inner-city apartments meet the code. A quick calculation: $50,000 per home times 10 million homes is a $500 billion theoretical cost. Not all homes will be done. Many will just be bulldozed and replaced with tiny apartments to house Labor’s new arrivals. Economies of scale may result. Yet the actual cost of building upgrades is expected to be 15 per cent of the transition cost. With a transition cost of $1 trillion, that’s building upgrades costing $150 billion. On the more likely $2 trillion transition cost, building upgrades will cost $300 billion. That’s money everyday Australians will have to pay or will lose when they sell a non-compliant property for a reduced price. In all the time I have heard net zero debated, the shocking cost of converting buildings has never been mentioned 

And wait; there’s more! Converting transport—trucks, shipping and aviation—is not mentioned. It’s another seven per cent—$70 billion. Eight per cent of the cost is made up of hydrogen development, carbon dioxide scrubbing and industry conversion costs. Add another $80 billion. The cost of new generation to replace affordable and reliable coal power with weather-dependent solar and wind fairytale power is the remaining 40 per cent, or $400 billion. Remember, we already have this coal generation. Electrification requires us to shut down the generation we already have and build it over again in solar and wind. The problem climate change carpetbaggers are now running into is simply this: the best places for these things have been taken. New installations are going further out, requiring higher transmission costs and higher maintenance costs. Residents are starting to see the environmental damage caused to our native forest and animals, and to farmland. The resistance has started. 

Let’s not forget wind and solar last for, at best, 15 years and then have to be replaced again and again and again. This means that every single industrial wind and solar installation will need to be replaced at least once before 2060, and more likely twice. The replacement process will be never-ending. Every 15 years the whole lot gets replaced again and again and again. The transmission network will require constant maintenance. Having added an additional 10,000 kilometres of poles and wires, the extra maintenance costs will remain in electricity bills forever. The truth is the public will never finish paying for net zero electrification. 

The good people over at Visual Capitalist have given calculating the cost of net zero a fair crack based on data on US National Public Utilities Council. Their total cost to electrify Western countries before 2060 is US$110 trillion. Insane! Australia’s share of that is currently estimated at $1 trillion; however, looking through the US data, which is more advanced than ours, a cost as high as $2 trillion is much more likely. 

The costings I’ve presented tonight are not firm. I hope they encourage the government to come clean with the costings they have to allow for an open, mature debate—one which asks: is it time to walk away and try something else? Like emission-free coal, for example. For a fraction of this money, we can simply retrofit coal plants with new technology that captures and converts carbon dioxide to useful products like fertiliser. Or stop collecting this because carbon dioxide is beneficial. For some reason, the government doesn’t want to talk about new coal plants. Hmmm; I wonder where that list of ALP donations is again? I suggest journalists go looking. 

This energy fairytale is going to cost so much money it’s never going to happen. Australia can’t afford it. How can Australians who are struggling with the cost of living under Labor afford trillions for electrification? The further we get into this, the more stupid and the more dishonest the idea looks. Ideology-driven bureaucrats, politicians, academics and journalists have put us on a path to ruin. Climate change carpetbaggers will be this country’s death. The rorting, the boondoggles and the waste of taxpayer money is just getting started. One Nation will end the net zero electrification scam and make Australia affordable again. Net zero is a scam, and One Nation is the only party that will stop it. 

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The Impact Net Zero is Having on Everyday Australians

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Everyday Australians have gone backwards by 8.2% since the Albanese Government came to power. The largest reason for this is the net zero madness, which has driven up the price of electricity across the entire supply chain, from the farm gate to supermarkets. While subsidies on household electricity provide temporary relief while in place, businesses don’t get the same assistance and must pass their increased costs onto you.

The solution is simple: end the net zero madness!

Transcript

Under this Albanese Labor government, the buying power of wages in Australia is now eight per cent less than when Labor took office, the develop world’s worst result. Consequently, the Prime Minister’s approval rating has gone from positive 27 to negative six per cent in the latest Newspoll, and down 13 per cent as preferred Prime Minister. The conversation on social media and in person simply won’t move away from just how expensive it is now to live under Labor. 

Fixing this mess is simple: end the net zero madness and destruction of Australia’s productive capacity. Net zero is increasing costs right through the supply chain and forcing up supermarket prices. One Nation would restore competition to sectors like supermarkets, which are oligopolies with foreign wealth funds manipulating prices for their own benefit and then taking those profits overseas, permanently reducing Australian wealth. Residents in some Brisbane suburbs have been hit with obscene rises in insurance of up to 10 times their previous premium. Insurance rose after Brisbane City Council produced a flood map reflecting climate change hysteria—fraud rather than actual historical flood data. Suncorp recently sold their bank because their insurance business is more profitable. How is that even possible in the free market? The Roy Morgan Research consumer confidence index has been below 85 for a record 82 successive weeks. One hundred is neutral; 85 is bad. Only one in 12 Australians expect good times ahead. Aren’t governments are supposed to make things better, not worse? 

Into this environment of despair, the government has introduced its misinformation and disinformation bill. The government wants to talk about anything except housing and the cost of living under Labor. One Nation will remain focused on offering policies to encourage enterprise and hard work to encourage and support families. Its time all Australians can once again enjoy the riches our beautiful country has to offer. 

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Government’s Chief of Propoganda, Chris Bowen

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The government is the largest spreader of misinformation, and its Chief of Propaganda is Chris Bowen. There’s no limit to the lies he’ll tell to push the Net-Zero pipe-dream that’s making everyone’s bills higher.

Transcript

Chris Smith: Let’s get on to energy. Now, a report from the US Energy Department is saying that with nuclear electricity, prices will drop 37%. Chris Bowen says renewables will always be cheaper. This is basically a blatant lie, isn’t it, Malcolm?  

Senator ROBERTS: Well, you stole the word right out of my mouth. It is a lie. It is fraud. Fraud is the presentation of something as it is not for personal gain. Chris Bowen has been pushing this bandwagon, the lies fraudulently to get political capital. He is telling lie after lie. Solar and wind are the most expensive forms of energy, that’s repeated everywhere. You know, AEMO doesn’t even cost the lowest price system. What they did with, relying on GenCost in the first place was false assumptions underpinning their calculations for solar and wind to make them look favorable and negative assumptions under coal to make it look unaffordable. That is completely false. And now we’ve got a circular argument that’s beaten back to us all the time. AEMO doesn’t cost the lowest price systems. It’s forced to exclude the cost of calculating coal or nuclear. This is rubbish – the stuff that comes out of the south end of north bound bull.  

Chris Smith: Yeah, well, the CSIRO should be condemned completely for their reliance on that GenCost report. Malcolm.  

Senator ROBERTS: That is fraud as well Chris. That was a deliberate misrepresentation of the energy structure. It was politically driven to achieve a political objective, the same as their climate. The CSIRO has admitted to me that the politician’s quoting them as saying that there’s a danger in carbon dioxide from human activity, the CSIRO has denied ever saying that and they said they would never say it. They admitted to me that the temperatures today was not unusual, not unprecedented. So the whole thing is based on the stuff that comes out of the south end of north bound bull. The CSIRO is guilty of misrepresenting climate science, misrepresenting nature and misrepresenting climate, misrepresenting energy. It’s just a fraud to extract money, to make billionaires richer, and to make, foreign multinationals richer.  

Chris Smith: Spot on.  

Senator ROBERTS: And we pay for it.  

Chris Smith: Spot on. You’re not wrong.

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DEBUNKED: Brian Cox & Senator Malcolm Roberts on QandA

Join me as I break down the famous QandA session from 2016 with Brian Cox.

Have my arguments stood the test of time? Have the warnings of certain disaster by 2024 come true?

I go into depth to explain the full story behind this exchange that captured millions of views.

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Inquiry into CSIRO’s GenCost Models & Assumptions

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The greatest lie told to Australians is that “wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy”.

Politicians and journalists, who should know better, are using a report of models from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO) GenCost to try to justify this claim. In recent decades, CSIRO has completely destroyed its once stellar reputation for scientific research. It has now allowed its name to be used for political agendas rather than real science. The underlying assumptions and inputs used for the GenCost model must be subject to scrutiny.

I voiced these comments in support of a Senate Inquiry to do that, which Labor and the greens voted down. What are they trying to hide?

Transcript

Yesterday in question time I asked the minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Senator Wong a simple question: exactly how many wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and kilometres of transmission lines were built last month? You’d think that, as the cornerstone of the Labor Party’s policy in government, the answer would be obvious and clear and given to me straightaway. To her credit—and I have a lot of regard for Senator Wong’s capability and think she’s one of the most capable senators in parliament—she said, ‘I don’t know.’ It’s the key policy for the Labor government, and they’re flying blind. 

Here’s what I told her in the second question. ‘Minister, the government’s own figures to meet your net zero target show that over the next eight years you need to install and connect more than 40 wind turbines per month, 22,000 solar panels a day, 48 gigawatt hours of batteries and 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines. I pointed out to her that the government is building nothing like that.  

The government’s wind and solar pipedream is going to be a nightmare. We are being driven off a cliff by the energy minister, Chris Bowen— 

Senator Fawcett: Order, Senator Roberts. Remember to use the correct title.  

Senator ROBERTS: Minister Bowen. This is a gargantuan task. This has been labelled by some people as the biggest transition since the start of the Industrial Revolution. It’s fundamental because energy has primacy in our society. Labor cannot tell us the cost of this transition of dumping affordable, lowest cost, reliable, stable and secure energy independent of nature’s vagaries and transitioning to an unreliable, high cost, unstable energy that is weather dependent and not secure. This is madness. But to do it without any costing is doubly mad. 

Think about it. We are giving parasitic billionaires and major corporations from around the world—many of them from China—subsidies for installing solar and wind. Those subsidies drive up the cost of electricity, and then we ship our manufacturing to China. China wins in two ways. We have got a National Electricity Market forcing out coal with unfavourable regulations—just driving coal out by making it impossible to feed the market. But it’s not a market; it’s a so-called market that bureaucrats control. It’s a national electricity racket that was introduced by John Howard’s coalition government.  

While they’re driving out coal and subsidising solar and wind, they now admit they need to keep Eraring Power Station open. They were going to shut it. They’re now offering subsidies to the owners and operators of Eraring to keep it open, so we’re subsidising them to shut it and we’re subsidising them to open it and then we’re giving $275 relief in power prices to consumers across Australia. Why? Because the energy policy has failed.  

By the way, I need to mention that on the night of the incoming Minns government, the new energy minister said that they would have to look at the closure of Eraring. She was laying a signal there—a hint—that they’d keep it open. That’s exactly what they must do because they’re terrified. The Australian Energy Market Operator has identified severe blackouts around December this year. The No. 1 factor that has driven our standard of living for the last 170 years since the start of the industrial revolution has been relentless reduction in energy prices, the unit cost of energy. It’s been a relentless reduction in the real cost of energy. That was until John Howard’s government introduced the renewable energy target and other measures, and since then it has relentlessly increased. Australia has gone from having the cheapest coal and the cheapest electricity prices, thanks to our wonderful coal assets—high-quality, clean coal—to now having amongst the most expensive electricity. 

So let’s have a look at the terms of reference for the inquiry that Senator Colbeck has proposed. I thank Senator Colbeck for his motion. It says: 

That the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation GenCost 2023-24 report be referred to the Economics References Committee for inquiry and report … to explore assumptions and costings made in the report, including but not limited to— 

the CSIRO has been criticised for every one of these things I’m about to read out— 

a. asset lifecycles; 

b. capacity factors; 

c. energy type costings; 

d. financing costs; 

e. fuel costs; 

f. augmentation requirements of transmission systems; 

g. data standards techniques; and 

h. other related matters. 

CSIRO has been belted by experts on every one of these. We badly need this inquiry. These are the fundamentals of the biggest transition since the industrial revolution. 

CSIRO used to be a highly respected organisation. It was internationally respected. It has now come to mean ‘corrupted science is really obvious’. It lost its way distorting and omitting science to fabricate support for the UN’s climate fraud. The CSIRO has never presented the basis of science which is empirical scientific data—measurements and observations—within logical scientific points that prove cause and effect. The CSIRO has been integral in working with the UN climate change body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in pushing distortions of science. 

I have had three meetings with the CSIRO at 2½ hours each and, under cross-examination, it has admitted that it has never said that there has been any danger due to human carbon dioxide. It has admitted that, even though climate change was based initially on global warming claims, temperatures are not unprecedented. It has claimed the rate of temperature change is unprecedented, but the rate of temperature change is almost negligible since 1995. It’s almost flat. That’s according to NASA’s scientific satellite measuring temperatures. The CSIRO gave us not one solid paper to back up its claims. What it did give us was two papers we tore to shreds. Then they gave us another two, and we tore them to shreds. There are 24,000 datasets that I have access to that have been scraped from sites all over the world, including CSIRO’s and BOM’s case studies, and there is not one that shows any change in any climate factor—not one. It’s just inherent natural variation with cycles superimposed. Not only that but the CSIRO has never provided bases for policy and neither has any department or the alphabet soup of energy agencies. They have all failed to answer my question: what’s the specific effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate, on any aspect of climate or on any factor of climate? What is the quantified specific effect per unit of carbon dioxide from human activity? Ocean heat content, air temperatures, ocean temperatures, storm frequency, severity and duration—not one of them can give me any answers on those at all. That is the basis for policy. Without that, you cannot understand or evaluate the options for reducing human carbon dioxide, you cannot track the progress of the measures and you cannot cost the alternatives. This is flying blind over a cliff. Electricity prices in every country with significant solar and wind have increased dramatically. Labor is simply continuing the policy that John Howard started, Tony Abbott continued, Malcolm Turnbull accelerated, Scott Morrison continued and Peter Dutton now propagates by confirming net zero. 

Let’s turn specifically to the CSIRO report, GenCost. CSIRO used to be a respected scientific organisation, advancing our country’s technology. I refer to Senator Fawcett’s speech a minute ago. Now the CSIRO is a blatantly political organisation. It’s more interested in pushing the agenda of the government than in providing impartial, evidence-based research. Ideology is infecting most of CSIRO’s work like a virus. The GenCost report is shocking evidence of just how biased this once-respected institution has become. The methodology used in GenCost is so flawed that there are multiple hours of podcast series explaining all of its deficiencies, and I give a compliment Aidan Morrison for some of his work. 

Let’s start with the cost of wind and solar. Many people, including some politicians, think GenCost says what it costs for wind and solar to deliver a kilowatt of power today. It doesn’t! It fundamentally doesn’t tell us the cost. GenCost imagines some fairytale dreamtime half-a-dozen years in the future and projects what they think wind and solar will cost, with no accurate, solid assumptions underpinning that. CSIRO even admits that this prediction they come up with is not the actual cost, but this is what policy relies on. CSIRO completely excludes the cost of every single power project up until 2030. They’re free! They’re free, according to this mob. 

Just look at the tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission projects assumed to be free: EnergyConnect, $2.3 billion; Marinus Link, $3 billion. All are assumed to be free. Free, free, free! Santa Claus is giving them to us! There’s Central-West Orana, $3.2 billion, and HumeLink, $5 billion. It doesn’t sound like much when you rattle off a billion, does it! There are dozens more major projects. 

Let’s look at the pumped hydro that’s assumed to be free. There’s Snowy 2.0, $12 billion plus and counting. That’s not included. There’s the Battery of the Nation in Tasmania, our biggest island. That’s $3 billion. It’s not included. There’s the Borumba pump hydro, $14 billion. It’s not included. There’s the Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro, $12 billion. It’s not included. The list goes on and on and on. Tens of billions of dollars is excluded from the cost of wind and solar, but we’ll all pay for it—some people with their jobs when they’re shipped off overseas, some people for whom the cost of living will drive these out of reach. 

Almost all of these projects, especially the pump hydro, are only being planned because of wind and solar, yet CSIRO excludes them from the cost of wind and solar completely. It’s like saying a Ferrari is the cheapest car you can buy, as long as you take out the cost of the sunroof, the air conditioning, the wheels, the gearbox and the engine. 

Then there are their calculations on the cost of coal. They added an extra five per cent cost to the finance figures with no basis whatsoever. CSIRO just says, ‘Well, no-one likes coal anymore,’ and, whack, a completely unfounded hurdle is added on top. Then there’s the capacity factor. That’s the percentage of time the station is running. It has a huge impact on the calculated cost of power, if you assume a billion-dollar power station is running for only half the time it actually is on and can be on. They’re destroying the viability of coal with lies. 

CSIRO also says: 

In 2030, we project forward including all existing state renewable energy targets resulting in a 64% renewable share and 56% variable renewable share … 

They just assume that we’re going to press ahead with variable renewable energy, regardless of what happens and without any costings. They just assume it’s going to go ahead. It doesn’t sound like impartial modelling to me, because it’s not impartial modelling. 

But the people of Australia will pay for this. They will pay for it with their jobs. They will pay for it with their livelihoods. They will pay for it with their family budgets. What sensitivities have been applied for political risk? Policy will almost certainly change and you may have a government elected that ditches false targets. What percentage of chance do they give that? The United Kingdom is abandoning net zero. The Prime Minister has said so. Japan is switching back to coal. It is already using a lot of coal. Germany is scrapping wind turbines to extend coalmines. It is tearing down wind turbines that were installed so that they can mine the coal underneath them. China is producing 4½ billion tonnes of coal. We produce 560 tonnes, and we export most of that overseas, and China is buying coal from us. Indonesia is now the world’s largest exporter of coal. India has well over a billion tonnes of coal. 

This report, the GenCost report from CSIRO, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, yet it’s being used to justify one of the largest destructions of our economy in Australia’s history. Even if you naively believe we need to run the grid on solar and wind, this GenCost report deserves scrutiny and the Australian people deserve transparency. CSIRO has repeatedly shown it is dishonest on climate and energy. We need an inquiry. In refusing or opposing, the government shows it fears its assumptions will be shown to be flawed. If I’m wrong, CSIRO would be vindicated. So CSIRO, if it had any courage, would stand up and say, ‘Bring on the inquiry.’ Thank you, Senator Colbeck. We support this motion. 

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The True Causes of Coral Bleaching

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When discussing coral bleaching, the assumption these days immediately defaults to blaming mythical “climate change” instead of looking for the real cause.

There are many causes of bleaching, including changes in salinity, UV radiation, sedimentation, and pollution. Coral bleaching is a response to environmental stress, not just temperature fluctuation.

Studies have shown evidence of bleaching dating back centuries, long before any “claimed” influence on the weather was caused by humans. Coral has shown resilience and adaptability to different conditions and reefs have recovered from bleaching events for millennia.

It’s time the climate carpetbaggers were called out for their selective pseudo-science that is designed to protect their taxpayer funding. It’s time to recognise the resilience of our coral reefs and bring the tourists back to Queensland.

Speech with Annotations

Coral-Reef-BleachingDownload

Transcript

When discussing coral bleaching recently, the assumption defaults to blaming claimed human climate change instead of asking what actually caused it. Coral bleaching in simple terms is a loss of colour in coral, most often due to symbiosis dysfunction, a severing of the join between the coral polyp and the host tissue—the calcium carbonate that gives coral its white colour. Bleaching is a response to environmental stress. It has many causes, including changes in salinity, ultraviolet radiation, increased sedimentation and high nutrient levels after flooding or pollution.

Kamenos from the University of Glasgow found evidence of Great Barrier Reef bleaching in the 1600s. His paper has been contested, yet the many citations used to support his paper have not been. Hendy documented two hiatuses in coral skeleton growth, associated tissue death and subsequent regrowth in eight multicentury coral cores collected from the central Great Barrier Reef accurately dated to 1782 to 1817. This period was before humans are claimed to have influenced the weather.

Dunne recorded bleaching on the reef in 1928. Woolridge documented the bleaching caused by floodwaters carrying nutrients impacting on the reef. Kenkel found coral has plasticity to adapt to different environmental conditions and is more resilient than previously thought. Maynard found that coral adapts to bleaching by becoming more resilient. During the past 2.5 million years, there have been 40 glacial maximums and 40 interglacial periods. Eighty times, coral has had to rise or fall by up to 140 metres, and our coral reefs are still there. How resilient they are. 

Our reefs have been subjected to bleaching for millennia, and they always recover, as they did in 2022, when the Greens were telling us the reef was dead, and tourists believed them. Tourist numbers are below the long-term average, COVID excluded.

It’s time climate carpetbaggers were called out for selective pseudoscience designed to protect their taxpayer funding. Bleaching is a part of nature. It recovers. It’s cyclical. 

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The Biggest Air Con of the Summer!

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Queensland’s state-owned power grid reached into people’s homes 6 times and turned down 170,000 air conditioners.

It’s called PeakSmart limiting and they don’t tell you when they’ve cut your cooling —  instead they tell installers and repairers in case you call them out thinking there’s a problem.

They hope you won’t notice… Have we reached Peak Stupid yet with the government’s Net Zero target? 

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My Priorities for Australia’s Future

It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying what I don’t agree with. Today I set out the policies I do agree with. These are policies I have worked hard in the Senate to promote and will continue to do so.

Australia has natural advantages in mineral resources, agricultural land, water, sunshine and a moderate climate that in years past has made Australia the richest country in the world per capita — which is the wealth of the country divided by the number of inhabitants. Yet in recent years life has become so hard, not just under this Albanese Government but under successive Liberal and Labor Governments.

Income per capita is going backwards and opportunities we took for granted in our youth are now out of reach for today’s young Australians. Unemployment is much higher than the published rate, Australians can’t afford housing, electricity or even their groceries. Higher education is slipping from the reach of the middle class and many Australians are now unsafe in their homes and on the streets.

It does not have to be this way.

I spoke here in the Senate Chamber about the steps One Nation would take to solve the many problems Australians are facing after too many years of bad governance. Some of these steps include solving infrastructure issues, increasing productivity and wages, bringing back a people’s bank and ensuring cash continues to be available, and more.

Join us in helping our country to rebound and flourish.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I am often asked by people why life under Labor has become so damn tough so quickly and how a One Nation government would help. Australians are decent people and can see through government and media misinformation and disinformation. We all know when life is harder than it should be and when governments are screwing up. Out of control cost of living has resulted from a screw-up resulting from the actions of Liberal, National, Greens and Labor parties during COVID, when our government turned to the use of excessive authority instead of respecting human rights and choice. During COVID, One Nation did advocate for human rights, including quarantining the sick and letting the healthy get about life. Countries that did that are now back to normal. Life in those countries is easier because there’s no massive COVID bill to pay. Australia has a huge inflation problem now due to printing $500 billion—half a trillion dollars—to cover COVID expenses, including JobKeeper and pharma products that are now past their use-by date. Money printing causes inflation. One Nation said so at the time. 

One Nation now stands ready to rebuild our economy and deliver wealth and opportunity to all Australians. We will reduce new arrivals to a level where arrivals equal departures. That’s called zero net migration, leaving room for about 130,000 new migrants each year. We will limit student visas to a level at which we can accommodate and teach students properly. We will not import more labour until those who’ve arrived have found a job. We don’t need new arrivals being handed Medicare cards, driving up government spending on health and on schools and infrastructure. We will decline to renew the visa of any new arrival who has failed to find a job or make a contribution during their visa period. 

We will license construction of new and efficient coal plants, which will bring electricity bills down 50 per cent. We will cancel any weather dependent generation project that we can legally terminate, and we will ensure that wind and solar sponsors pay into a bond account to pay for the removal of those monstrosities at the end of their short life. Electricity generation should be based on the cheapest source, not the dearest, and the dearest is wind and solar. We will fast-track mining approvals and port upgrades. We will terminate the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and leave everyone’s water where it is to ensure farmers are free to grow food and fibre to feed and clothe the world, and we’ll then get together with the states to review the actual data on river health, environmental outcomes and the social and economic costs of the basin measures taken so far. More work may need to be done, though only after a full basin review. We will build infrastructure projects like the Queensland tropics water and hydro project, the northern Australia’s east-west rail line, the Abbott Point and Pilbara steel parks and the inland rail to the port of Gladstone without crossing the Condamine. 

At the moment, Australia’s internet traffic from our east coast to Western Australia and vice versa routes through China. So, if you want to connect with Western Australia, it goes through China. We will build a direct connection instead and upgrade pinch points to lift our internet out of Third World status and make it First World. Human error being what it is, the recent Optus failure may happen again. Once there is network redundancy and proper planning, outages should not happen. The Optus failure is on the government’s infrastructure and communication ministers, who clearly have not done their job to ensure the redundancy we need to keep Australians connected. And we need to keep cash as a payment option, as should every business. These are just some of the many opportunities for infrastructure to harden our economy and provide wealth and opportunity for all. 

Infrastructure improves economic efficiency and underscores the productivity improvements that fuel wage rises. Workers don’t need to work harder to get a productivity rise. People are already at breaking point. Government needs to work harder—faster internet, faster ports and rail, better highways, cheaper power and more water. This is how we increase productivity and, with that, the wages of everyday Australians, without inflation. We will purchase the Suncorp Bank and operate that as a model bank to provide a full range of services, including cash through Australia Post outlets. Under One Nation you will have a real local bank branch that handles cash. 

We will stop foreign interests owning Australian land and residential property. The bounty of this beautiful land should accrue to those who call Australia home. Large corporations need to be held to account. For 30 years the share of the economy coming from wages has fallen, yet for 30 years the share from corporate profits has grown. There’s a point where a fair return on risk and investment has become a perceived entitlement to ever-increasing profits from rapacious and unprincipled merchant banks investing money on behalf of predatory billionaires, billionaires like Bill Gates, who we discovered just after the election is best mates with the Prime Minister. 

In response to running out of other people’s money to spend, the Treasurer, in a recent media appearance, walked back his responsibility to harden and grow the national economy. One Nation does not shirk from responsibility. Join us in restoring our country for people to abound and flourish. 

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Humans Not Responsible for Increases in CO2

I spoke briefly in the Senate about climate science. The data really does speak for itself.

Only 12% of the increase in CO2 between 1750 and 2018 was man-made.

That’s much too low to be the cause of any claimed global warming.

Nature controls carbon dioxide levels, not humans.

Transcript

I want to talk briefly about climate science, because we’ve seen COVID science has been smashed. Earlier today, I promised to talk tonight on why the climate change cult of doom and their rebranding to ‘climate boiling’ is scientific nonsense. Let me do that now using my favourite thing, empirical scientific data, by referencing a peer reviewed paper titled ‘World atmospheric CO2, its 14C specific activity, non-fossil component, anthropogenic fossil component, and emissions (1750-2018)’, published in Health Physics journal in February 2022. It’s a long title, but it saves the phone calls from fact-checkers. This paper used caesium-14, or 14C, to analyse carbon dioxide in the atmosphere across the period from 1750 to 2018: 

After 1750 and the onset of the industrial revolution, the anthropogenic fossil component and the non-fossil component in the total atmospheric CO2 concentration, C(t), began to increase. Despite the lack of knowledge of these two components, claims that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component have continued since they began in 1960 with “Keeling Curve: Increase in CO2 from burning fossil fuel.” … The specific activity of 14C in the atmosphere gets reduced by a dilution effect when fossil CO2, which is devoid of 14C, enters the atmosphere. We have used the results of this effect to quantify the two components. … These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil component. We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming. 

The fundamental basis of the theory of anthropogenic global warming has been found by analysis of atmospheric gases to be completely wrong.

Nature, as I’ve said many times, controls carbon dioxide levels.

Correction: The speech was written referencing the type of dating as caesium-14. The correct word is carbon-14.

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The Malcolm Roberts Show #1 – Climate Scientist Tony Heller

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Join me with world renowned climate realist Tony Heller as we go through the actual data on temperature and climate.

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