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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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Stop the Net Zero Agenda and Protect Our Economy

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In October, the Climate Change Authority released its roadmap for achieving the “net zero transition,” which effectively is the destruction of our industrial and agricultural base and introduces communist level controls over every aspect of our lives.  Named the Sector Pathways Review, this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It should be compulsory reading for every Australian who is intent on joining the migration of lemmings over the net zero cliff. 

The authors claim to have consulted widely, presenting this document as a consensus on the way forward, but this is far from the truth. Their so-called “consultation” consisted of a whip around at universities and government departments that financially benefit from the net zero scam. Unsurprisingly, these stakeholders welcomed the prospect of more money, power, and self-importance. 

The climate change narrative has been structured to work backwards from the goals outlined in this report, which functions as a mechanism for Communist control. The unfounded confidence and hubris displayed is based on scientific fraud, data tampering and cherry picking. 

The link to the report is on my website at:  

One Nation is committed to ending the net zero destruction of our economy and way of life. 

Transcript

I move to take note of the Climate Change Authority’s Sector Pathways Review, which is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It should be compulsory reading for every senator and every journalist intent on joining this migration of lemmings over the net zero cliff. Net zero is not some feel-good agenda; it’s a fundamental destruction of our productive capacity, our businesses and our freedom to rebuild in the image of the bureaucrats, academics and carpetbaggers that produced this report. The report authors hide behind the term ‘consultation’ yet consulted within their own urban bubble and got the answers they wanted—yes to more money, yes to more power and yes to more self-importance. The climate change narrative has been constructed to work backwards from the goal detailed in this report—I’ve read it with my own eyes—a Communist control mechanism, a control mechanism that I’ve never seen so clearly explained as in this document, with such unfounded confidence, such hubris, based on scientific fraud, data tampering and cherry picking. 

Let’s go through it. Firstly, replacing petrol and diesel powered vehicles, appliances and industrial equipment with electric versions—that’s your car gone. The government will force you to buy an electric vehicle or have no vehicle at all. Gas heaters and hot water systems: gone. Gas cooking: gone. Gas barbecues: gone. Commercial kitchens: put over to electric, which will force many to close, as the cost is prohibitive. For families already struggling with the cost of living under Labor, these measures will mean losing their possessions without being able to afford a replacement. This will become reality once the circular economy arrives in full, requiring a much higher build standard and repairability and high levels of recycled components. That sounds great—just wait until we see the price tag. Appliances would have to be rented because most people won’t be able to afford them. Remember the famous promise from the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab, ‘You will own nothing and be happy’? Are you seeing it yet? Secondly, we will need to generate more wind and solar power than ever before. For Australians living outside the urban bubble, this will mean every mountain and hill will have a wind turbine on top and even more farmland will be covered in solar panels and fractured with transmission line corridors and access roads where none were previously needed. Every home will need a solar installation connected to a wall battery—$15,000 right there. Yet the power is not yours; it’s theirs. To keep the grid on, your power company will take the charge out of your wall battery or your electric vehicle—yes, your electric vehicle. This is what the report means when it says ‘grid integration’. It’s sometimes called a virtual power plant. It’s not virtual power; it’s your power. 

Thirdly, the report accepts that, while some technologies, like solar and storage batteries, are now proven, many other necessary technologies are not. They have no clue what’s coming. The decision to rely on unproven, speculative technology across much of their sector analysis—punctuated as it is with weasel words like ‘could’ and ‘may’—will inevitably underperform. The report says: 

The authority has not attempted in this report to examine how, where or when such future breakthroughs could occur. 

It’s hard to believe they’re jeopardising the whole country on this. We are spending between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, destroying everything we have, on the promise of a better future based on breakthroughs that we know don’t exist yet and are not even imagined. That’s criminal malfeasance—and, given the strong flow of money from net zero carpetbaggers into the climate change nomenklatura, a stronger word may be appropriate. As the Age reported today, the Clean Energy Regulator: 

… has failed to manage conflicts of interest or properly investigate fraud … and … staff … concerns about its relationship with the companies it regulates. 

Under net zero cronyism, the suffering of everyday Australians and their employers has only just begun. The last thing abattoirs will slaughter is farming itself. The plan uses the discredited claim that ‘livestock accounts for half of agricultural emissions’. This ignores the methane cycle. That’s high school science. I know the disciples of the sky god of warming have rewritten the methane cycle and discredited those using it and advancing it, yet science can’t be rewritten—only lied about, as this report does. 

The reason for this spurious war on cattle is clear in the report: reducing our emissions will ‘require the conversion’ of agricultural land to forested areas, and ‘the supply of suitable land for reforestation is limited’. The farming sector must realise that the bad guys are coming to steal more of your rights to use the land you own. The people who will have the money to buy red meat and naturally grown produce after 2050 are the same people writing this elitist, antihuman garbage. The same people who gorge on filet mignon and champagne at Davos tell everyday Australians they will have to eat less. And you will have less, being forced into city high-rise homes and eating lab-grown meats and fast-cycle hydroponic greens with next to zero nutritional value. Based solidly on science and with every fibre of our being, One Nation opposes this agenda. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. 

Leave granted; debate adjourned. 

Sector Pathway Review 2024 (Full Report)

https://www.climatechangeauthority.gov.au/sector-pathways-review

2024SectorPathwaysReviewDownload

Sector Pathway Review 2024 (At a Glance)

SPR at a glance – FinalDownload

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Bouldercombe Residents Rebel Against Corporate Big Battery Project

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All across Queensland, wind, solar and battery projects are being given free reign to clear the environment with minimal checks or consultation.

Bouldercombe residents are right to be concerned. A battery that was only one-tenth the size of the planned project caught fire there, and authorities were unable to put it out. The fire was just left to burn.

Only One Nation will reduce power bills and protect the environment by putting an end to the net-zero madness.

 

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The Greens’ War on Coal

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The Greens’ war on coal is fuelled by misinformation. Modern coal is particulate free, and gas recovery technology on new coal fired power plants captures and converts steam stack gas into essential products like fertilizer, AdBlue, ethanol and even explosives, resulting in zero gasses being released into the atmosphere.

Coal mines are remediated to return the land to its original state.  Many Australian mines have already transformed into productive pastures.  In the long term, coal mines do not damage the country; rather, it’s industrial wind and solar that do. Blasting the tops off mountains to install industrial wind turbines is permanent environmental destruction.

Coal is essential for the health of our grid, for providing breadwinner jobs and to ensure prosperity of rural communities.

Transcript

The Greens misinformation on coal has gone on long enough. Fifty thousand Australians rely directly on the coal industry for their livelihood. Given the services to coalmines, add another 50,000 people that coal keeps afloat in mining communities—actually, it’s much, much more than an additional 50,000, with a reported multiplier across Australia of six times the number of jobs directly from mines. They’re communities that, if this unscientific rubbish from the Greens goes on much longer, the Greens will decimate. 

Modern coal plants are free from particulates and noxious gases. The only thing that leaves their steam stacks is water vapour and carbon dioxide: nature’s fertilisers. Australian and international firms now offer a process to capture those gases and convert them to productive things like fertiliser, AdBlue and ethanol—some things that the Greens will need so they can keep blasting the tops off mountains for wind turbines; that’s explosives. With this new capture and conversion technology, coal uses fewer resources and has a smaller environmental footprint than any nature-dependent power the Greens can advocate. 

Coal is not damaging to the environment. To those who post photos online of coalmines, alleging environmental vandalism and that the planet is boiling, please tell the whole story and please tell the truth. Coalmines are rehabilitated after use. A few moments ago I posted a link to the New Hope Group’s website, showing the remediation of their coalmines that I’ve personally inspected. It’s beautiful green countryside supporting thousands of cattle and in turn supporting rural communities. Mines remediate; that is fact. And damage from wind turbines and their access road construction is permanent; that is fact. 

Under current legislation, mining must pay into a bond fund to pay for remediation. No such provision exists for the net zero madness. Once this orgy of taxpayer and electricity-user subsidies is exhausted, these solar and wind companies will sell their installations into a shell company and scoot on back to whatever foreign tax haven in which they’re based. On humanitarian and environmental grounds, One Nation opposes this reckless, destructive Greens motion. Taxpayers will be left to clean up the mess. Communities will be destroyed, and it will cost electricity users and taxpayers tens of billions of dollars more to clean up after this insane green nightmare. 

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Net-Zero Advocates Confronted with Reality

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For years, net-zero campaigners have refused to admit that wind and solar cannot keep the lights on during the evening and morning peaks. Climate realists using the phrase “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow” have been mocked for years. 

That ridicule has now gone down the memory hole and net-zero advocates are now acknowledging the truth of that statement by introducing a policy called “firming.” This involves the process of storing electricity generated during the day for use during peak demand in the evening and morning—exactly what I’ve been saying for 15 years. 

The issue here is the cost: batteries and pumped hydro costs a fortune and batteries only last 10 to 15 years before needing replacement. There’s also an energy loss to consider—batteries lose about 10% of the energy put into them and another 10% on the way out, while pumped hydro uses more electricity to pump water uphill than it generates on the way down. 

I asked the Minister about the cost of “firming,” and her answer was quite embarrassing — she didn’t know. It’s likely to exceed $100 billion. 

Transcript | Question Time

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister. Minister, during evening and morning peak hours, electricity generation from industrial solar and wind averages just 10 per cent of rated capacity, because solar doesn’t work in the dark, and wind goes quiet at night. Big batteries can transfer electricity from daytime to the evening peak. Minister, how much battery capacity is your government planning to build to maintain electricity supply between sunset and sunrise?

Senator McAllister: I thank Senator Roberts for the question. The senator is right to point to the fact that Australia’s electricity system is changing. We have, as I think most senators understand, a fleet of ageing coal-fired power stations that require replacement. I can tell you: they are not getting any more reliable. In fact, over the last year, I don’t think there’s been a day when we haven’t had a circumstance where at least one of the coal-fired power generators in the national electricity market has been offline for one kind of maintenance or another. Of course, this arises because we went through nearly a decade when the coalition, while in government, did not land an energy policy. They had 22 policies; none of them landed. Our task as government—

The PRESIDENT: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts?

Senator ROBERTS: I have a point of order. Standing order 70 (3) (c) says, ‘Answers shall be directly relevant to each question.’ I asked about how much battery capacity your government is planning to build to maintain electricity supply between sunset and sunrise.

The PRESIDENT: I will draw the minister to your question.

Senator McAllister: Of course, our task is actually to restore some measure of order to the energy system so that the investors who build the generation capacity that is necessary to power homes and businesses have the confidence to invest. And that is what the Capacity Investment Scheme has been designed to do. We have just been through a round of the Capacity Investment Scheme where we received very significant commitment to underwriting very significant battery capacity. We do understand the significance of this technology. What the experts tell us is the most cost-effective way to establish a national energy market that can meet the energy requirements of Australian homes and businesses is a combination of wind, of solar, of batteries and of gas, and that is the policy setting that we— (Time expired)

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, you couldn’t tell me the battery capacity your government is planning to build, so you may not be able to answer this question. But let’s just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, please. What is the capital cost of that battery backup, and how much of that bill will taxpayers pay? Simple.

The PRESIDENT: I will just wait for silence, particularly on my left. This is Senator Roberts’s question.

Senator McAllister: As I have indicated previously to questions asked by Senator Roberts in this chamber, the cost of the transition is regularly estimated out to 2050 by AEMO, and it is included in the Integrated System Plan, which is regularly published and updated. Different states have different arrangements in terms of the ownership and investment in generation, and so the investment that will take place will look different depending on the ownership arrangements that are in place across the national electricity market. However, we understand that there is a measure of support required from the Commonwealth government, and it is why we have put in place the Capacity Investment Scheme which aims to provide support for those who are seeking to invest in new capacity, whether it is in batteries or other forms of generation in the national electricity market.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS: So the minister cannot tell us the battery capacity required, nor the capital cost of that battery backup. So, Minister, AEMO is working off a figure of 60 gigawatt hours of storage at around $1 billion an hour, which is $60 billion. How much will electricity prices and supermarket prices rise as a result of having to spend that staggering amount of money?

Senator McAllister: Well, the one thing I can say is that we will take advice from the experts about the optimal investment that’s necessary to build out the national electricity market. It’s a different approach to the one taken by those opposite, because right now we have a coalition government whose plan is to invest taxpayers’ money in the most expensive form—

The PRESIDENT: Minister, please resume your seat.

Senator McKenzie: You can’t tell us how expensive yours will be!

The PRESIDENT: I’m waiting, Senator McKenzie! Senator Roberts.

Senator ROBERTS: A point of order on relevance. I didn’t ask about the coalition government, as you said. I asked about the Labor government now.

The PRESIDENT: I will draw the minister to your question, Senator Roberts. And while I have the attention of the chamber, I will ask senators, particularly those on my left, to listen in respectful silence. Minister McAllister.

Senator Thorpe: You lefties need to listen!

The PRESIDENT: Senator Thorpe, that includes you! Order! Minister, please continue.

Senator McAllister: Thanks very much, President. The senator asked about our plans. The Capacity Investment Scheme will deliver 32 gigawatts of renewable and clean dispatchable capacity to fill emerging
reliability gaps. The truth is that will put downward pressure on prices, because one of the consequences of the failed policies of those opposite is that we do have capacity capabilities that need to be filled because energy capacity is leaving the market and it has not been replaced. We are taking steps necessary to replace it. (Time expired)

Transcript | Take Note of Questions

I move: 

That the Senate take note of the answer from the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister, to a question without notice I asked today relating to energy. 

My question was quite simple: how much is the government’s net zero policy going to cost just for firming? Firming is the provision of what used to be called stable, synchronised baseload power to keep the lights on when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. Firming wasn’t needed when we had coal power because coal plants provide stable, synchronised baseload power day and night. Solar and wind don’t. 

AEMO estimates Australia will need 65 gigawatt hours of firming to guarantee grid stability. Depending on the time of year, that storage will need to be refilled each day to get the grid through the next night, including most of the evening and morning peak hours. Australia’s energy consumption in 2023-24 shows that, in summer, for the morning peak hours we needed 36 gigawatt hours of power and for the evening peak hours 28 gigawatt hours. So AEMO’s figure of 65 gigawatt hours of firming is about right. The $64 billion expense—billion dollar expense—will be added to every Australian’s power bill, or it will go onto your taxes. Either way, under the Albanese government you will pay. 

The $64 billion cost is just for one night. These batteries need to be refilled the next day with power from the grid. That means that every day we need a huge amount of solar and wind just to charge the batteries. One wet day preventing large-scale generation from solar and wind means the batteries will not be recharged, resulting in blackouts and energy management that I’ll discuss tomorrow. It’s clear that 65 gigawatts of capacity at $64 billion is not enough to avoid blackouts. We’ll probably need twice that, as well as having to build extra solar and wind just to charge the batteries. 

Everyday Australians are up for hundreds of billions of dollars just for firming. That’s in addition to the electricity needed on any day. This is an insane impost on every Australian struggling with paying for their groceries and insurance and with the cost of living under Labor. End the net zero mandates now. 

Question agreed to. 

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The Costs and Risks of Australia’s Largest Solar Project: Sun Cable

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This is another of my ongoing questions into understanding the cost of net zero. The Sun Cable project is an insane proposal to cover 12,000 hectares of the Northern Territory with solar panels, at a cost of over $30 billion. There are multiple problems with this project, including environmental damage, power loss during transmission and site remediation once the panels reach the end of life.

These large energy companies are not required to, and don’t set aside funds for remediation. This means Australian taxpayers will end up footing the bill for billions of dollars in cleanup costs when this project inevitably fails.

Despite this being the world’s largest solar project and carrying significant sovereign risk, the Minister had no clue what I was talking about.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister, and it’s regarding the SunCable industrial solar project in the Northern Territory. Minister, please advise the Senate of the total value of guarantees and, as a separate figure, the total value of subsidies available to the project. 

Senator McAllister: I am aware that the Minister for the Environment and Water has recently provided approval for the SunCable project. This is a project that, as I understand it, seeks to establish renewable generation capability in the Northern Territory and also significant transmission capability, which will allow that generation to be used within the Australian grid but potentially also to be exported to our Singaporean neighbours. This is potentially an extremely important project. It is also one that is first of kind in the Australian context— 

Senator ROBERTS: I have a point of order, under standing order 72(3)(c): ‘Answers shall be directly relevant to each question.’ I asked about the total value of guarantees and the total value of subsidies. What are they? If you don’t know, please just say so. 

The President: I will draw the minister to that part of your question, Senator Roberts. 

Senator McAllister: The senator asks me to comment, I think, on policies that exist in the Australian context to support the rollout of reliable renewables, and of course— 

The President: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts, on a point of order? 

Senator ROBERTS: I asked about the total value of guarantees and the total value of subsidies. That’s it. 

The President: Senator Roberts, the minister barely said seven words, so let’s just hear the answer. I have reminded the minister of the question, and I will continue to listen carefully. 

Senator McAllister: The Australian government takes our advice about the future of the energy system from experts, and all of the advice that has been provided to us is that the most cost-effective form of new generation to replace the older, ageing assets that are shortly to retire is reliable renewables. 

Senator CASH: He just wanted to know what the figure is. 

The President: Order! Senator Cash, this is not your question. 

Senator McAllister: We take our advice from experts because we believe that Australians deserve the most cost-effective form of energy that is available to us. We can’t actually go back to doing things the way that they were done under the previous government. 

The President: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts, on a point of order? 

Senator ROBERTS: I remind the minister that I asked about the total value of guarantees and the total value of subsidies. 

The President: I have reminded the minister of the question, and I will remind her again, Senator Roberts. 

Senator HENDERSON: It’s okay to say you can take it on notice. 

The President: Order! Thank you, Senator Henderson. 

Senator McAllister: My advice is that this project has been— (Time expired) 

The President: Senator Roberts, first supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: The project proposes to generate electricity in the Northern Territory and send it to Singapore using a 4,300-kilometre-long cable, mostly undersea. This is five times longer than Norway’s 760-kilometre Viking Link, the current longest cable. Viking Link loses 3.5 per cent of its generation through transmission loss. What percentage of the project’s Australian generated electricity will be lost in transmission to Singapore? 

Senator McAllister: The senator asks about, essentially, the economics of the project that has been approved, and what I can advise the senator is that this is a matter for the project proponent. The government’s role is not to assess the economics of this project. The minister has made a decision in relation to its environmental approvals. This is part of a broader transformation of the Australian economy. We are blessed with abundant sunshine, wind and land, with skilful engineers and skilful personnel, with a mature commercial and legal environment and with a natural electricity system that many other countries seek to talk to us about because of its strengths. These are strengths for Australian communities. They are strengths for Australian regions and they are potentially a source of significant economic opportunity for Australians living in regional communities. (Time expired) 

The President: Senator Roberts, second supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: The minister can’t or won’t tell me about guarantees and subsidies nor a core project assumption, so, Minister, my second supplementary question is: how much is SunCable lodging as a rehabilitation bond for the 12,400 hectares of land that will be covered in solar panels? 

Senator McAllister: The senator asks about the terms on which the approval for the SunCable project has been provided. I can tell the senator that Minister Plibersek applies the terms of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to all of the matters that come before her. This is a project proposal that intends to establish a significant source of new generation in the Northern Territory, as you indicated in your first supplementary question. 

The President: Senator Roberts, on a point of order? 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, is there a rehabilitation bond in place to cover the desecration of the environment? 

The President: Senator Roberts, it’s your responsibility to seek a point of order, not to re-ask your question. If you have a point of order, I invite you to make it. If you don’t, I’ll ask the minister to continue. 

Senator ROBERTS: President, the point of order is one of relevance. 

The President: I believe the minister is being relevant. She has outlined to you the approval processes. So I will ask her to continue. 

Senator CASH interjecting— 

The President: Order! Order! Senator Cash, which bit of ‘order’ doesn’t apply to you? Minister McAllister, please continue. 

Senator McAllister: The minister’s responsibility, of course, is to apply the law when a project is put before her. Since coming to government we have sought to do so in relation to all of the projects before us, but we are pleased to see new renewable projects coming online. Since coming to government, we have given the green light to more than 55 of those under the

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Government’s Net-Zero Push Threatens Economy

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The government wants to drive us off a cliff as we speed towards Net-Zero dictates from the un-elected United Nations and World Economic Forum.

None of it is based on proper data and all the evidence we have is that it will destroy our energy grid and our economy.

With inflation re-emerging, we have to put a stop to the billions being poured into climate policy making Australians pay more.

Transcript

Every time you see a wind turbine or an industrial solar complex, think one thing: your energy prices are going to increase. That’s what those things mean. We’ve been promised that energy prices will decrease, but wind turbines and industrial solar complexes mean higher prices for people, for families, for small businesses, for larger corporations and employers, for the whole community. And they mean trillions of dollars in waste in our economy. In every country around the world, as the percentage of solar and wind has increased, the cost of electricity has increased. That’s a fact—everywhere, consistent. And now, after nearly 30 years of pushing solar and wind, which started with John Howard’s renewable energy target, we see the ridiculous situation of the Labor government offering energy price relief. Why? Because they’re driving up the cost of energy to make it unaffordable; that’s why. So let’s have a look at why. Let’s see why killing the environment in the name of supposedly saving it is costing us so much. Let’s turn to the terms of the motion for an inquiry. So many people want us to have an inquiry, not just rural people but urban people, because they’re worried about the cost. This is what the inquiry is looking into: 

… the importance of ensuring that the National Electricity Grid has the capacity to provide a reliable and secure supply of energy to Australians as the economy transitions to new and more dispersed— 

and we’ll talk about that— 

methods of generations and storage, and acknowledging that transition will necessarily transgress on agricultural, Indigenous and environmental lands and marine environments … 

The environment and our productive capacity are suffering. 

I’ll cover some key concerns that are key to the inquiry because the uniparty has not thought about this—from when John Howard, the Liberal Prime Minister, started the renewable energy target to this ridiculous situation we’re in now. By the way, John Howard started that and did three other things, which we might have time to discuss, that laid the foundation for the crippling of our energy supply in this country. Six years after he was booted from office, he admitted that, on the matter of climate science, he is agnostic. He didn’t have the science. This whole thing is based not on science; it’s based on contradictions of science. 

Let’s start with solar and wind. The amount of steel needed per megawatt of electricity from a coal-fired power station is 35 tons. For wind turbines it’s 542 tons of steel. That’s 15 times as much. Straightaway, wind is suffering a cost penalty. It’s a huge cost burden. Then, when you look at the energy density of coal, it’s very high. It’s not as high as uranium, but it’s very high. For solar and wind, it’s very low. 

Secondly I see the government throwing barbs at the coalition, and well it should over aspects of its nuclear policy, but the government is accusing the opposition of uncosted policy. Where are your costs, government? Where are your costs on solar and wind? Where are your costs on solar and wind, Greens? We even see some solar and wind complexes, massive complexes in the Kennedy electorate in Queensland and in western Victoria, not connected to the grid. They have been built but not connected. That’s how much thought has gone into this. It’s bloody ridiculous. 

Solar and wind have an inherently high capital cost plus a low energy density, which means low energy production and very high cost per unit of electricity. Plus the amount of land needed for solar and wind is enormous. And then we see that the average capacity utilisation of solar and wind is 23 per cent. That’s less than a quarter of what the nameplate capacity is. Now we see the latest figures just released on wind, which show that it’s 21 per cent. That’s one-fifth of the capacity. What does that tell you? For a given capacity of a coal-fired power station, you’ll need a certain capacity of solar and wind. Multiply that by four, because you’re getting less than 25 per cent. Multiply it by five in the case of wind. Five times makes it prohibitive. Four times makes it prohibitive. Then think about this: at peak hour, when we need maximum electricity, the average utilisation and the average capacity is 10 per cent, which means that, to get the equivalent of that coal-fired power station, we need 10 times the solar and wind capacity—10 times. Then, for sizeable periods, we have the sun not shining brightly because of clouds or we have the wind drought. That means we need a further multiplication to make sure we can store up enough in energy and batteries. But the batteries to store that amount of wind and solar energy have never been thought of, never been considered and never been developed. It’s impossible. The cost if we don’t have them will be blackouts and outages in hospitals, businesses and family homes. 

Plus there are the transmission costs. Transmission costs, many years ago, used to be 49 per cent of the cost of the electricity bill. I don’t know what it is now, but it’s certainly substantial. Solar and wind have to be located a long way from the major metropolitan areas, which means straightaway that transmission costs are even higher than for a coal-fired power station, which can be located close to the metropolitan areas. Then, because of the dispersed nature of solar and wind, we have even more transmission lines. Then, because of the capacity factor that I just mentioned, we have even more transmission lines. This makes it prohibitive, not just in terms of the installation of solar and wind but also in terms of transmission lines. Plus, the transmission lines will barely be used because of the capacity of solar and wind not being utilised. And then we have the 15-to 20-year life, at best—12 to 15 years more likely—of solar and wind industrial complexes. That means that over the life of a coal-fired power station or a nuclear power station, they have to be replaced four times, so multiply the cost again by four. What have we multiplied it by so far? We’ve multiplied the cost by five, then by 10 and now by another four. Yet the CSIRO considers not one piece of that puzzle—not one piece. They say that it’s all sunk cost; just ignore it. 

That’s why solar and wind can compete. And they still need subsidies. Then you’ve got to add batteries and pumped hydro. Pumped hydro itself is an admission of failure. You cannot have pumped hydro without a disparity between peak hour prices and off-peak prices, and that’s due to the failure of the grid and solar and wind. And then we need firming, another cost, because coal, nuclear and hydro are stable, synchronous power supplies. Solar and wind are asynchronous—unstable—so they need firming. And they need backup gas or backup coal because solar and wind are unreliable. There’s a doubling. Look at the multiplication that we have got there. 

None of this is included in the GenCost report from the CSIRO. It assumes no transmission cost because they’ve already been built. That’s rubbish. We need far more new transmission lines. We have an inherently higher cost from solar and wind, plus low capacity, plus regional, plus dispersal, plus backup, plus stabilisation. Think about this: for a business, you need a stable, reliable, low-variation input. When variation occurs, it costs enormous amounts of money. At industrial and manufacturing plants, farmers are using backup, so they have to pay twice for their electricity. We also have a huge footprint in terms of land. Solar complexes and wind turbines use far more land and are far more scattered than a concentrated coal-fired power station or a nuclear power station. They’re taking up huge quantities of resources. The resource footprint of solar and wind is enormous.  

We have agricultural land being sterilised. We have poisons and toxins potentially going into the Brisbane water supply, into their drinking water—lead, cadmium—which feeds Brisbane, Beaudesert, Gold Coast, potentially Toowoomba, Ipswich, Logan and other areas in the south-east of Queensland. We also have the future cost yet to be added—Snowy 2.0.  By the way, when they first did the costings of Snowy 2.0, thanks to Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership and poor leadership, they forgot about the transmission lines. They forgot to add the transmission lines. Whoops! We better add a few more billion to that. Now look at it. It was originally slated for $2 billion. We could see this, and I’m not an energy expert. We could see it when Malcolm Turnbull first released it. We told them, and no-one took any notice. Now they’re putting in all these additional costs, and Snowy 2.0 is heading for $14 billion and perhaps $20 billion—if it moves! This is not about having an alternative energy supply; it’s about less energy and control of energy. 

We also have Mr Albanese and Mr Bowen, ‘Blackout Bowen’, talking about us being a renewable superpower. It means economic and environmental suicide, resource sterilisation, and displacement of Indigenous. No costings—a huge catastrophe! We’re talking about billions of dollars and impacts worth trillions of dollars. We must have this inquiry. They’re building in a high-cost overhead and a huge environmental legacy. When some of those farmers who are looking at the money now—some aren’t selling out, but some are selling out because of the money coming in—think about the environmental legacy. No bonds. The energy company owning the wind turbines and the solar complexes can just walk off and leave it. There’s no requirement to fix it. Farmers will pay for that. They’re already paying in many cases, as are rural towns, with the slow thrum, thrum, thrum of infrasound, which is proven harmful to humans. So they’re killing the environment to save it. We’re seeing human progress being reversed. 

The No. 1 message from the last 170 years since the industrial revolution started was that we have a higher standard of living and all the benefits that brings because of a relentless reduction in energy prices. What we’ve seen since John Howard come to power is a reversal of that. As energy prices increase, productivity falls, wealth falls and prosperity falls. We see a reversal of human progress. So what if we spend billions on solar and wind, what if it costs our economy trillions of dollars—and it will—and what if China does not? What happens then? Now do you get what’s going on? Now do you see it? 

I want to turn to two other points. As I said, John Howard introduced all the problems we’re seeing now: the Renewable Energy Target; the stealing of farmers’ property rights to comply with the UN Kyoto protocol; and the National Electricity Market, which is really a national electricity racket. He also introduced an emissions trading scheme as policy—not as fact, but as policy. That’s a carbon tax. He was the first major leader of a major party to have that. The CSIRO has never provided any empirical scientific data and logical scientific points that prove the need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity. The CSIRO admitted that to me when I held them accountable, and they gave me three presentations, each 2½ hours long. In the first presentation they admitted that they had never given the advice and had never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and needs to be cut. In the second presentation they gave me, they admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented; they’ve happened before—many, many times. In fact, the scientific term for periods of high temperature is ‘climate optimum’, because they’re beneficial for humanity, for civilisation and for the environment. The temperatures are not unprecedented. 

The second point is that I’ve asked many government departments in this federal government for their basis of policy. To have a basis of policy you need to have the impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on some climate factor. No-one has given us that. We have amassed 24,000 datasets on climate and energy from around the world, from legally scraped websites and research institutions like the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, and we’ve never found any change in any climate factors at all, so there’s no basis for policy. You need that quantitative impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on a climate factor so that you can then study the alternatives, if you want to get rid of the carbon dioxide production. You’ve got to have that to track progress, but there’s none of that. There’s no basis for policy. We are flying blind. We’re heading for a cliff. 

Then we see there’s no environmental impact statement for the use of solar and wind—none at all. What impact is the energy we’re taking out of the wind going to have on our climate? What impact is it going to have on the natural environment? Yet they say that 0.03 per cent of the carbon dioxide is coming from humans, and 1.2 per cent of that from Australians. No impact quantified—the absurdity is enormous. And who will pay for all this mess? We, the people. You are foisting this on the people. We need an inquiry now. (Time expired) 

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Coal Still the Cheapest Reliable Power Source

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The argument about nuclear is overshadowing an inconvenient truth.

Coal remains the cheapest form of baseload reliable power and nuclear is a better alternative compared to wind and solar.

I support nuclear power and believe it should be part of our energy mix, but there’s no need to eliminate coal to make it happen.

Transcript

Labor, the Greens, the paid-off media and climate activists are all fighting tooth and nail against nuclear. You can hear them screaming so loudly because reliable baseload power is a massive threat to the billionaire solar and wind cartel. Both sides of politics have, for more than two decades, mismanaged energy so grossly that we’ve caused an energy crisis that Australia is now facing down. One Nation congratulates the coalition on agreeing with One Nation’s longstanding policy to remove the ban on nuclear energy and have a debate about where it sits in our energy needs. We can only hope that One Nation’s full policy is adopted one day: remove all the subsidies and let the cheapest form of power win so we can put more money back in Australians’ pockets. 

There’s no reason that we need to forcibly shut down coal to put nuclear in the mix. The coalition plan is to forcibly acquire coal-fired power stations, shut them down and replace them with nuclear. Let’s do nuclear, and let’s do coal too. One of those coal-fired power stations the coalition wants to shut down is at Tarong. I visited there on Friday. It sits right on top of a coal mine. Coal is dug out of the ground and put on a conveyor belt straight into the power station with minimal transport costs. What more could you ask for? We’ve got 40 years of real-world costs on the Tarong stations, and it’s as cheap as chips. It uses high-energy-density fuel. Why tear down Tarong and replace it with nuclear based on projections—or worse, solar and wind based on unicorn farts? Instead, just build another coal-fired power station right there at Tarong beside it and use the same power. 

The coalition can’t do that, because it’s fully committed to the United Nations net zero madness, a catastrophic nightmare in the making, and we haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve got these people in the government putting on benefits to energy policy because of the rising cost due to their policy. Only One Nation will say, ‘up yours!’ to foreign unelected organisations telling us what to do and instead use Australia’s coal and uranium resources for the cheapest power possible. 

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Chris Bowen Says the Quiet Part Out Loud on Nuclear

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.

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Taking the Higher Ground – Chalumbin Win for Environment 

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In a win for the environment, the proposed Chalumbin industrial wind project on the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland has been rejected. Communities throughout Queensland are facing similar, environment-destroying proposals.  

This is a great win for the Community who have fought for years against this environmental vandalism. I’ve visited the area twice in the last 6 months, spoken to residents, and then represented their concerns in the Senate on a number of occasions. 

The rejection is a rare win for the environment over virtue-signalling green power schemes that simply do not stack up on an environmental or economic basis.  

Wind and solar are unreliable sources of power, poor investments when you remove the subsidies provided by taxpayer’s money, and terrible for the environment despite the sales pitch of ‘green’ energy, which is disinformation. We’re also seeing these so-called ‘renewables’ projects halting for financial reasons, with investors pulling out of large-scale wind and solar projects both in Australia and overseas, owing to their unprofitability.  

Local environmentalists made a fierce, years long campaign against plans to turn Chalumbin into a wind installation.  

Wind Farm (15/05/22). Top of ridge line that used to be in pristine condition now smashed.

Installing wind turbines is massive environmental vandalism. From grinding the tops off mountains for 250 metre high wind turbines to gouging 70-metre-wide roadways to access them and for the thousands of kilometres of transmission lines that run through national parks and private land. The net-zero plan for wind and solar cannot supply our energy needs and will destroy the natural environment Queenslanders love the most.

Wind turbines create disturbances to the air that prevent soaring birds from flying in the “tail” of these turbines. Kaban wind turbines near Ravenshoe are so large the disturbance interferes with soaring birds like Black Swans, Sarus Cranes and Brolgas for as much as 5 km.

Brolga (a member of the crane family) in flight. This species is found across tropical northern Australia, QLD, and parts of western Victoria, central NSW and south-eastern South Australia

This Labor government, with the blessings of both the Greens and the Liberal party, is accelerating its push to turn pristine Australian bushland into an industrial landscape for the Net Zero agenda. The foreign-owned Chalumbin industrial wind development would have put up monstrous 250-metre-high towers with the third longest blades ever seen in the world. The turbine blades are big bird killers and the noise from these machines is known stop wildlife breeding.

The Hypocrisy of Industrial Wind and Solar

The primary threat to wildlife globally is habitat loss. Koala and other endangered wildlife habitat has been taken. While the Greens talk frequently about saving the koalas, they pick and choose which koalas they care about. This vandalism must stop.

Top of ridge line that used to be in pristine condition now smashed. Chalumbin would have had 146km of new roads like this and Upper Burdekin will have another 150km of new roads

At the end of a mining operation, the mine can be filled in and remediated. In fact, legal contracts require it. This isn’t the case with the destruction created by wind and solar. They are not required to make good afterwards or remove toxic waste. There’s no replacing remnant forests or a mountain top after it’s been blasted off and bulldozed to make way for wind turbines.

The Chalumbin proposal was given a corner-cutting approvals process reserved for ‘renewables’ by the Queensland government. It set its sights on destroying 1000 of the remaining 8000 hectares of the buffer zone between rainforests and open plains to the south. The wet sclerophyll forest is home to the spectacled flying fox and northern great glider.

Chalumbin is not the only wind site needing our protection

As Nick Cater commented in his article in The Australian, 22 April 2024:

“Bulldozers were ripping swathes through hundreds of hectares of remnant native forest at nearby Kaban, blasting 330,000 tonnes of rock and dirt from the sides of hills to build access roads and turbine pads bigger than football fields.

All of this was occurring without a squeak from environmental groups, every one of which appeared to have swallowed the renewable energy Kool-Aid and, in some cases, its cash.”

Nearby Kaban excavations have disturbed arsenic found naturally in local rock formations. We simply don’t know what effect this will have on native wildlife in the years ahead.

The Woodleigh Swamp is an important wetland. Thousands of swans and brolgas normally rest here each year. Locals say that since Kaban opened, only a few kilometres away, the swamp has been almost deserted. Kaban and Chalumbin environmental impact statements make no mention of the catastrophic effects these installations have on uplift capacity for migratory and soaring birds, nor abandonment of natural upland habitat, despite a wealth of papers proving the link.

Sarus Cranes are only found in the far north-east of QLD in Australia

Common sense has prevailed for Chalumbin. Finally, it’s being recognised that you can’t save the environment by destroying thousands of hectares of forests as wind and solar projects will. But what about all the others that are in the pipeline?

It seems impossible that the equally sensitive Upper Burdekin project just 4.8km from the boundary of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area.

There are at least 30,000 hectares of remnant forest still earmarked for clearing across 52 wind farms on the Great Dividing Range in Queensland under current proposals.

This is the disgraceful reality behind the climate change agenda. A reality most Australians never get to see.

How do the Greens feel about vulnerable Greater Glider habitat being cleared in Far North Queensland? Will they say it’s for the Greater Good?

Critically endangered native plants making way for concrete, fibreglass, and steel that will be consigned to the scrap heap in 12-15 years is acceptable by-kill for the Green Agenda? Really?

Destructive projects like the Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro in prime platypus habitat at Eungella must be ruled out.

This should not be a case of rewarding the squeaky door. Projects like Smokey Creek Solar that were quietly approved against local protests because they didn’t have a talented nature photographer like Steven Nowakowski to tell their story must be revisited and put through the full environmental assessment.

I congratulate the local environmentalists for their campaign to preserve this unique environment. We support Friends of Chalumbin and Steven Nowakowski. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Steven and thank him for his work capturing these fragile and beautiful ecosystems. The environmental movement is waking up thanks to environmentalists like Steven who’re getting out and filming and recording the truth of the destruction of nature.

The government must stop killing the environment to “save it”.

Media Release: Environment Wins Over Destructive Chalumbin Wind Project

The proposed Chalumbin wind project on the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland has been rejected on environmental grounds. This rejection calls the entire net-zero transition and other projects into question. Common sense has prevailed – you can’t save the environment by destroying thousands of hectares of forests as wind and solar projects will.

After local environmentalists made a fierce, years long campaign, which I wholeheartedly supported, Minister Plibersek looks like she is managing appearances rather than the environment.

30,000 hectares of remnant forest will still be cleared across 52 wind farms on the Great Dividing Range in Queensland under current proposals. Destructive projects like the Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro in prime platypus habitat at Eungella must be ruled out. Projects like Smokey Creek Solar that were quietly approved against local protests because they didn’t have a talented nature photographer like Steven Nowakowski to tell their story, must be revisited and put through the full environmental assessment.

Congratulations to local environmentalists for their campaign to preserve this unique environment. The net-zero plan for wind and solar cannot supply our energy needs and will destroy the nature Queenslanders love the most.

The government must stop killing the environment while claiming they’re saving it.

Media-ReleaseDownload
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