I joined Andrew Gray on his Podcast – Healthy Leadership Mentor where we discuss many topics including the many ways the Australian people are being deceived.
👉 Subscribe to his Newsletter: https://andrew-gray.ck.page/profile
🎙️ Subscribe to his Podcast: https://healthyleadershipmentor.buzzs…
Real wages have gone backwards, erasing a decade of pay rises since this government took office. This data is up to March, so it doesn’t reflect the current inflation rise. So, if Australians feel they’re working harder and getting less, it’s because they are.
Net zero policies are driving up electricity prices, which in turn affect the entire economy. Every sector—whether farming, manufacturing, or retail—uses power, and rising energy costs inevitably get passed on. In the March quarter, business bankruptcies reached record levels, with the construction sector hit particularly hard. Housing construction is declining, yet the government continues to bring in more immigrants.
This government has clearly failed in its economic management—there is no trust left.
The Reserve Bank has just announced the inflation rate for May as four per cent, which is above the expected rate of 3.8 per cent. What’s even worse is that the underlying inflation rate, which had been trending downward, has now increased to 4.4 per cent. Inflation is surging, and it’s entirely the fault of the Albanese Labor government. Today we heard Finance Minister Gallagher again bragging about this government’s track record on protecting wages. The data does not support that statement.
According to the Australia Institute, real wages of everyday Australians have fallen from $52,900 to $52,080 since this government came to power. That figure has been calculated to March this year, so it doesn’t take into account what is now rising inflation. If everyday Australians feel like they’re working harder and going backwards, it’s because you are. The inflation spike was entirely predictable. Net zero measures continue to force up electricity prices, which cascade throughout our entire economy. Every business, from farming to manufacturing to retailing, uses power. Any increase in power has to be passed on, and this is what we’re now seeing.
One Nation calls on the government to abandon the insane net zero transition before the economy falls apart entirely, catastrophically. In the March quarter, business bankruptcies were at record levels. Bankruptcies in the building sector were especially high. Housing construction is not rising; it’s falling. Yet this government continues to bring in more new-arrival immigrants, which is inherently inflationary. The economy as a whole is just barely staying out of recession, with GDP growth at 0.2 per cent, a figure that shows the destruction that net zero is causing to our entire economy. I hope the Reserve Bank holds its nerve and doesn’t raise interest rates. If it raises rates, everyday Australians will be doing it even tougher. What a mess. This government is not fit to govern—no trust.
🌟 Join us for a FREE community forum hosted by David White, your One Nation Candidate for Lytton in the Queensland State election.
📅 Thursday, 8 August 2024
🕒 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
📍 Tingalpa Hotel, 1563 Wynnum Road, Tingalpa
Are you feeling the pinch of rising costs, mortgage stress, and house affordability? You’re not alone!
📢 Voice your concerns in our Q&A and connect with your community!
RSVP here: https://qld.onenation.org.au/community-forum-cost-of-living-and-housing-crisis
Dining in? Please book direct with the hotel on 07 3213-9660 or online here: https://tingalpa-hotel.resos.com/booking
The media, Labor, Greens and lobby groups are scared of Nuclear power because it threatens the massive subsidies wind and solar billionaires like Mike Cannon-Brookes, Simon Holmes à Court and Twiggy Forrest are getting from Australians.
With reliable baseload power, there’s little need to tip billions into the wind and solar pipe-dream and that’s the reason they are scared of nuclear and coal.
The Snowy Hydro is a $12 billion pumped hydro project that connects two existing dams in the Snowy with a tunnel, to allow excess power generated by industrial wind and solar sources during the day to be used for pumping water up the hill into the top dam, where it can be released to provide hydro power for the evening and morning peak periods. This sounds like a reasonable idea except, the cost started at $2 billion when announced by Liberal PM Malcolm Turnbull in 2018. It’s now $12 billion and that’s not including the cost of the transmission lines to take the power into the national grid, which is $14 billion at the least. I expect the final cost will more likely be $20 billion.
Additionally, the project itself and the transmission lines are being built through undisturbed National Park, which will be permanently scarred.
This project will generate 350,000 MW/h of power per annum, providing revenue of $30 million a year at current rates, which suggests they expect electricity to become much more expensive. This means the project will not recover it’s capital cost and is likely to run at a loss every day it operates. The same machinery that is used to pump water up hill and the same “headrace” tunnel used for that purpose, is the same tunnel that brings the water down and generates electricity. This means the facility can’t pump water up and generate electricity at the same time.
So, while it’s true that the generator has a capacity of 2,200 MW, it doesn’t maintain this output all day. As Snowy Hydro admitted during my questioning, they aren’t actually generating new power; they’re simply time shifting existing power. This project has encountered delays due to drilling mistakes and now faces serious obstacles to completion.
Why are we throwing good money after bad on this boondoggle? The reason is that without pumped hydro acting as a “big battery” to transfer expensive, unreliable wind and solar power from the day (when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing) to the night and early morning when it isn’t, the grid will never survive. Evening and morning peak hours will be in darkness – every day. In renewable energy terms, pumped hydro “firms” wind and solar. They have to build Snowy, regardless of the cost.
Here are some bold ideas you won’t hear from anyone but One Nation.
1. Ensure cheap power by turning on coal-fired stations, building more, and ending solar and wind subsidies.
2. Stop inflation by halting excessive money printing.
3. Guarantee cheaper housing and rents, prioritising young Australians.
4. Secure cheaper groceries by supporting farmers and building dams.
And lastly, use our natural resources for Australians first.
One Nation is committed to putting Australians first and freeing them from unnecessary restrictions.
Here are things you won’t hear from anyone in the budget, except for One Nation because we’ve got the guts to say what you’re thinking.
Firstly, guarantee cheap power—turn the coal fired power stations back on, build more coal fired power stations, and remove solar and wind subsidies. It’s the only thing that can save us right now. Secondly, stop inflation. Stop quantitative easing—printing excess money. A trillion dollars was concocted during the COVID response, which is a major cause of the inflation we’re still fighting today. Thirdly, we’ll guarantee cheaper houses, cheaper rents and get young people into their first home. Don’t just cut net overseas migration: start deporting. Prior to COVID, there were 1.9 million visa holders who needed housing and who were fighting Australians for a roof over their heads. That has increased to 2.3 million today, plus 400,000 tourists and others. Ten per cent of our population is on visas and needs extra housing. We will ban foreigners from buying Australian property. They’re currently snapping up nearly one in 10 new Aussie homes.
Fourthly, get cheaper groceries—build dams and help farmers produce tonnes of fresh, healthy produce for Australians. Give farmers water and the right to use their land, and we’ll never have to worry about grocery bills again. Fifth, use all of our natural resources we have right here for Australians first. There’s no need to become a green superpower, and we never will. We’re already an oil, gas, coal and uranium superpower. The government won’t do this because some foreign, unelected organisation in Zurich or New York will claim that we’re not complying with our international obligations.
Governments on both sides have forgotten that their first obligation is to Australians and no-one else. One Nation knows this. We’ll put our trust in Australia’s people and release them from the nanny state that tells them everything they can and can’t do, which will enable people to abound and flourish. That’s our promise of what would be a One Nation budget. We will always remind members of parliament to put Australians first.
In trying to please everyone, the Treasurer’s third budget will please nobody.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ third budget fails to deliver affordable houses, cheaper power bills and groceries, and any hope for the future. That’s what a good budget should deliver.
A better way is putting Australians first and using our natural resources to drive wealth, abundance and opportunity for all.
Cheap houses, cheap power bills, cheaper groceries and hope for the future—that’s what a good budget should deliver. Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s third budget fails to deliver on all of these issues. Once his short-term coupons expire, inflation will fire up. Handouts and subsidies don’t bring inflation down; they just hide it temporarily. The Treasurer even admitted as much in his budget speech last night. He said:
Electricity prices would have risen 15 per cent in the last year if not for our efforts—
the Treasurer means his handouts—
instead, they rose two per cent.
Has there ever been a greater admission of failure of the net zero pipe dream? With the most wind, solar, batteries and green schemes on the grid in our history, actual power prices rose 15 per cent in just 12 months. When the last budget’s power relief ran out, Australians would have faced that entire price rise in one hit. That’s right: Treasurer Chalmers has been forced to extend another round of power bill relief. Australians would have rejected what the net zero lunacy has done to our once cheap power. Cheaper houses—with 2.3 million visa holders needing housing in the country right now, Australia is in the grip of a terrible housing crisis. Good working families, Australian families, are sleeping in tents, in cars and under bridges. Treasurer Chalmers tells us to prepare for another 280,000 migrants. Given his track record on immigration predictions, we should prepare for more. With no hope of building enough homes to house those new arrivals, rent, house prices and homelessness will only get worse.
How about hope for the future? There is little hope. The Treasurer tells us to expect crippling, worse deficits for the next 10 years, starting with this year. A better way is possible with One Nation, by putting Australians first and using our natural resources to our advantage. Then we can again become the best in the world.
At Senate Estimates I asked the Australian Energy Regulator if they were concerned that there seems to be increasing control over people’s electricity and access to electricity. It seems to be a case of “see no evil” at the Energy Regulator after hundreds of thousands of Queenslanders had their air-cons remotely throttled by the Government.
As the grid gets more unstable because of net-zero policies the government needs more control over electricity use to avoid damage to infrastructure.
One Nation will oppose this WEF inspired control dystopia at every turn.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing again today. I have a question about the emergency backstop mechanism from the Queensland government’s Department of Energy and Climate. It’s implemented in Queensland and it allows the government to turn off people’s solar panels at will. A lot of people in Queensland were shocked when the government reached into their homes and controlled their air conditioning units 170,000 times in the last two months. Now we’re finding out the government can turn off people’s solar panels as well. I don’t understand why the panels on someone’s house would have to be remotely cut off, even for self-consumption. As the regulator, do you have any data on how many of these generation signalling devices have been installed in Queensland under this emergency backstop mechanism and how many are installed nationally?
Ms Savage : Is your question about smart inverters?
Senator ROBERTS: It’s about smart meters that are cutting off air conditioning units and cutting off solar panels.
Ms Savage : There is a backstop mechanism that’s been put in place through the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council, which I don’t know if the department wishes to comment on. Essentially, it’s to avoid situations of what they call minimum demand, where you might have—
Senator ROBERTS: Minimal demand?
Ms Savage : Minimum demand problems. It’s where in system operation you might have so much solar in the system—
Senator ROBERTS: Like the middle of the day.
Ms Savage : That’s right. South Australia is where it’s been most acute. You might have so much that you can’t keep a stable minimum generation load in place. Solar is turned off during those emergency situations to ensure that you can keep that minimum stable generation load. I’m not aware of the figures that you’ve just quoted around the number of times it’s been done in Queensland, so I’ll look to my colleagues, Ms Jolly or Mr Duggan, to see if they can assist.
Mr Duggan : I was going to ask if you could give us a sense of where those figures came from, Senator, because I hadn’t heard them before.
Senator ROBERTS: I can get back to you on that. It was widely reported in the press last week.
Ms Savage : It’s not consistent with my understanding, so I think we’d need to see the figures.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. We’ll get them to you. Under the National Electricity Rules, what remedy or compensation is available to a homeowner if their solar panels are turned off remotely and they suffer some kind of damage because of that?
Ms Savage : Again, it’s not an area of the AER’s responsibility. I’m not sure whether there are compensation payments in place—I don’t think there are.
Mr Duggan : I think having access to the information that you’ve got would help us out enormously, but, to me, the direction of the question is more one that goes to AEMO’s management of the grid. I suspect they would be operating that part of the system. If we can get the information from you, we’ll endeavour to work with those—
Senator ROBERTS: Doesn’t the Australian Energy Regulator oversee the whole lot?
Ms Savage : Yes, but not necessarily the way in which the system is operated, and that’s a system operation question. We make sure people comply with the rules. One of the things the Australian Energy Regulator is doing is working with the network companies to do what’s called flexible export limits. This is to ensure that you have a greater opportunity to optimise the solar system across the whole grid so that we’re not seeing solar panels being turned off unnecessarily. Did you want to add anything, Mr Cox?
Mr Cox : No. I think that’s basically right. At the moment, solar panels, as you mentioned, are turned off to preserve the stability of the grid. It’s a fairly rigid arrangement. Perhaps a more flexible arrangement would allow people to export more frequently at times that are convenient to them, and that’s something we’re exploring with the various network businesses.
Senator ROBERTS: You used the word ‘acute’ and talk about ensuring a stable minimum generation load. These things—solar and wind—have introduced a hell of a lot of management issues, which adds costs and risk to the system.
Ms Savage : I think they add cost and risk at times through the day, but they’re also at times free. From that perspective, we see a lot of negative prices—in South Australia and Queensland, in particular—through the middle of the day, which lowers overall average prices of the system, but at other times of the day there are costs to manage the system. Ms Jolly has just reminded me that we do have the export services network performance report, which looks at how the networks are and how much solar energy is being exported into the grid. That report might be useful to you too.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. Could you send us that, please.
Ms Savage : Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: You may not be able to answer this question, but you’re the overseer. How many air conditioners have been installed with remote demand management systems under the PeakSmart program in Queensland?
Ms Savage : I wouldn’t have access to that data.
Senator ROBERTS: Would you be able to get it on notice?
Ms Savage : I don’t think we would have that as an agency; that sounds like a Queensland government program.
Senator ROBERTS: But you’re overseeing the national.
Ms Savage : We oversee the bits that are within the national electricity law and rules. State based programs usually are done through state based legislation.
Senator ROBERTS: So they can operate independently?
Ms Savage : If the states have their own legislation, there will be elements that will operate through that.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you concerned that there seems to be increasing control over people’s use of electricity and access to electricity?
Ms Savage : In Queensland there has been direct load control of air conditioners and pool pumps for a very long time, for more than 20 years. From that perspective, it is not a new thing in Queensland; it has always been a part of the system operation in Queensland.
Senator ROBERTS: What about other states? Is it increasing?
Ms Savage : We would have to look at the numbers. I don’t have the numbers in front of me.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you get them on notice, please.
Ms Savage : Ms Jolly, would we have those numbers?
Ms Jolly : I’m not sure. They may come from the distributors who run those programs autonomously.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you how many smart meters have been installed in Queensland?
Ms Savage : I probably know how many smart meters there are in Queensland. We are at about 47 per cent in Queensland. Is that right? We’d have to take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: If you could, please. Forty-seven per cent of households have smart metres?
Ms Savage : We looked at this last week, so I’m trying to remember what the answer to that is. But I think that we’re heading into that territory in most of the jurisdictions now—up towards the high 40 per cents.
Senator ROBERTS: Is there anything in the National Electricity Rules that enshrines the right of a customer to refuse a smart meter? At the moment many of the programs have opt-out clauses, but my question is whether there is anything in the Electricity Rules that will stop an electricity company if they decide to try to force someone to take a smart meter, to make it mandatory.
Ms Savage : I think I’ll need take that on notice as well.
Senator ROBERTS: It seems like there is increasing power over people’s use of electricity. I’ll just ask a few questions; you may not be able to answer these. It is about the emergency backstop mechanism website. The government says that the emergency backstop mechanism ‘is an important step in supporting Queensland’s transition to a more coordinated electricity system’. Is the electricity system becoming more coordinated, controlled?
Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, we’ve canvassed this a few times over the course of the day. It’s very difficult for officials to answer questions about documents when we don’t know the provenance of the documents or the dates they were published or we don’t have the document in front of us. Are you able to table that or perhaps provide us with a web link?
Senator ROBERTS: Sure. It was a website, last updated 12 December 2023, from the Department of Energy and Climate in the Queensland government.
Senator McAllister: I see. So it’s a Queensland government—
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Senator McAllister: I’m not sure that the Commonwealth government can answer questions about Queensland government programs. The AER may have information for you, but there are limits on what we can discuss in this forum.
Senator ROBERTS: I understand that, Minister. I’m just looking at what the Queensland government is saying about the ‘more coordinated electricity system’ and I thought that that might come under the Australian Energy Regulator.
Ms Savage : I would probably say that an electricity system must be coordinated—it has always been coordinated—because you have to have instantaneous meeting of supply and demand. That’s why you have a system operator to make sure that you’ve got generation resources available when people demand it. That level of coordination is fundamental to ensuring that we can keep a stable voltage waveform in the system. The physics of that demands it. To answer your question, it has always been a coordinated system and it will need to be remain a coordinated system.
Senator ROBERTS: It says it’s becoming ‘more coordinated’.
CHAIR: On this notion of the national energy grid and the role of the states, I think what we’re probably tripping over here is the situation where there is a national plan and the states each have a set of responsibilities. How they then roll out those responsibilities is sometimes done in the state and not necessarily part of the purview of—
Senator ROBERTS: I understand that. I’m trying to find out whether or not you have any role in that or any information about that.
Ms Savage : I’m happy to try and answer your questions. They’re just not necessarily directly in my patch, but I’ll help you however I can.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s about all I had. You’ve already answered the last one I had.
No one in government will take responsibility for the net-zero plan going wrong. Mr Parker who heads the Clean Energy Regulator is paid over $630,000 a year, yet he admits that even if catastrophic errors in claims about Net Zero are brought to his attention, he would do nothing about it. No-one on the panel were prepared to answer questions about your right to receive reasonable power bills or to continue to enjoy a standard of living better than a third world country.
Minister McAllister points out that the department is only responsible for the “broad settings” and that other institutions are there to simply follow their tasks under legislation.
Only One Nation is prepared to face up to the UN-WEF Net Zero agenda and pull the plug on the nation killing scam invented by predatory globalists.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. First of all, thank you for being here. Can I ask whether you take any responsibility for assessing the cost of trying to run the grid on wind and solar?
Mr Parker : No, Senator, we don’t do that kind of work. Our job, as defined by statute, is to administer various programs in the climate space, but not that one.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Do you do any analysis, measuring or modelling on how much wind and solar actually cost once you include the necessary firming or integration costs, the storage and additional transmission?
Mr Parker : No, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: Your job is just to pursue the legislative targets? That’s your statutory job?
Mr Parker : That’s broadly right. It is in an unofficial space somewhat broader than that, because we have insight, if you like, into industry trends and what’s going on through our liaison with industry, and we are able to feed those views into the policy process.
Senator ROBERTS: When you say, ‘trends’ what do you mean? They aren’t cost trends.
Mr Parker : No. We have some information on costs but, as I said, we don’t model those. The sorts of information which we look at are developments in the markets for the relevant carbon instruments, the quantity of investment taking place and so forth. We have an insight into that from our on-the-ground work.
Senator ROBERTS: You don’t raise the alarm bells over whether chasing net zero for the energy grid is practically feasible or how much it’s going to cost to get to 2035 with solar and wind powering everything?
Mr Parker : No, that’s a policy question; we don’t get into that.
Senator ROBERTS: You don’t test AEMO’s Integrated System Plan at all—there are so many acronyms aren’t there?—to see if it has any flaws? You don’t analyse GenCost from CSIRO to see if there are any faulty assumptions?
Mr Parker : We’re familiar with all of those reports, but it’s not our role to critique them, if you like.
Senator ROBERTS: As the national regulator for this type of energy, even if it were brought to your attention that there are fundamental flaws in the foundational documents for this whole plan, like the Integrated System Plan or GenCost, you wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything about it. It’s not your responsibility?
Mr Parker : It’s not our role within our statutory remit to do anything about it.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr Parker. I only ask, because almost every climate related agency I’ve ask, whether it’s supposedly justifying the mad switch to solar and wind or whether it’s actually implementing the policy says, ‘It’s not our job to consider the big picture.’ I’m not arguing that you’re shirking it—I’m not at all. I’m just confirming that you don’t do it. We could be driving off a cliff here and everyone is saying, ‘It’s not my job to think about the cliff, I just drive the car,’ because you’ve been appointed as the driver. Does that terrify you?
Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, you’re now—
Senator ROBERTS: Does it terrify you, Minister?
Senator McAllister: You’re now asking the official about his feelings and you’re asking me about my feelings. I can explain to you the policy position of the government, the policy arrangements in the government and the responsibilities. The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is responsible for the broad settings in relation to the energy market. They’ve been here this morning, answering questions from senators about the approach they take to policy development for the settings for the energy system. There are other institutions, as you’ve observed, that have either advisory or regulatory roles. The CER is one of them and they’re here and able to answer your questions about the task that they’ve been given under legislation.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Mr Parker and your team. Thank you, Chair.
Smart Meters cutting off your power is no longer a conspiracy theory. It’s already here! The Queensland Government reached into people’s homes to take control of 170,000 air-cons in the last two months.
Wind, solar and the demonisation of coal is destroying our once reliable power supply, turning Australia into a third world country, despite our vast natural resources.
Only One Nation will stop the Net Zero insanity and bring back cheap power bills.
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