And while Rome burns, let all of Australia concentrate on what really matters, gay marriage.

Yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull, unveiling the plans by Pratt for new investment in containers said, "You know everything my government does is designed to encourage Australian businesses to invest." The absurdity of this was underlined by Anthony Pratt informing us, "Our cost of energy in America is 2½ times lower than Australia.''

That pretty much sums up the stupidity of Turnbull and of Australia itself. While we have the current dropkicks we do have in parliament, we will be lucky to level out at Third World status.

“It is very difficult to think back to history for examples of when governments engaged so fully and comprehensively in acts of vandalism to destruction the economy of a nation whose prosperity they were charged with promoting”.

Totally true. Thank you Alan Moran

Yes, and I remember when we, with non privatized, non corporatized, publicly owned power and supporting coal mines, were around 2.5 times cheaper than America?

But that was before folks, who would be challenged to run a chook raffle, allowed themselves to be advised to, sell our energy provision down the river. And or use it as their personal ATM or gift that never stops giving to internal revenue.

And madness, when as every schoolkid knows, every western style economy rest solely on just two support pillars, energy and capital!

And while I absolutely believe in free market capitalism, those two can never evner allowed to become part of it, except as cooperative constructs.

You know where the folk who own the shop are the same ones who man it; and indeed compete with all others for your business!

And as the most efficient lowest costing free market, private business model, survived the Great Depression largely intact.

And hardly ever grow too big to fail!

And completely unpalatable to "blind" conservatives, who see their fellow drones being deprived of the usual free ride/free lunches, supported by the lowest common denominator, virtual slavery, highly exploitative, parasitic, that is their preferred, always grows too big to fail, business model.

This is where government of all political persuasion have failed, given they're invariably engrossed in the banal power struggle! They've completely taken their eye off the ball and the very make a difference, reason why a few of them opted for thankless politics?

Someday walk away safe (molten salt) thorium will be proven as the lowest costing, safest, cleanest power. That day has been and gone, Aiden, without so much as a single accident or incident, way back between the fifties and seventies. And only held back by green fundamentalists and intransigent recalcitrant morons posing as halfway intelligent politicians/humans!
Alan B.

Gawd here we go again,more rubbish from a bloke who has never done a hard physical days work in his life,he like most of the political class never worked just uni,then into the IPA.
Now for the IPA, funded by unknown mysterious people is a registered Charity which to me is a bit rich, pack of over paid bludgers who have no idea what its like to live on a low wage & pay bills as well.
If you can BS with a straight face like all IPA/Liberal Politicians, because they are one & the same,a secretive bunch of so called fellows of the IPA of whom we now have a number of clones into Federal Parliament as Libs I,m not sure what exotic Uni you have to attend to be one of them but most strike me as being thick as two planks.
Like the party they own along with the chief backer one Murdoch,they blame Labor for everything,what we need say the IPA paymasters is Austerity,lower wages,less tax on poor bastards like the wealthy,tax is terrible,sounds like they are pinching the ideas of the anti tax crowd in the US.
In reality the IPA ideas are straight out of the robber baron era in US in the late 19th early 20th Century,where Jack knew his place, well chaps that's as near as your Govt will get they & you will gone sooner than you think

An excellent article.

It is State governments that set excessive energy floor prices to keep power campanies profitable. This was part of the deal years ago when State Governments sold electricity networks (for big bucks) to profit making private companies (Origin Energy etc).

Yet State and Federal politicians know the political equation:

Spurious Renewable claims = More Votes from the political center

many regressives sit in Government offices all day being overpaid and flying around the country at tax payer expense. They then lecture on cutting back on emissions knowing the fraudulent dogmas will keep their own jobs safe. Little do they care about the pensioner struggling to pay heating and cooling costs. Never have we had such a dumbed down community so as to believe the gw scam. Maybe we deserve what we are getting by allowing these socialist to infiltrate the schools and universities. No wonder fake science is on the nose with so many.

Compared to the US Australia drew the short straw with oil and gas but got lucky with uranium. (So why don't we exploit it?) Other countries may be unable to replicate US fracking success apparently because their shale basins were twisted and overheated and not allowed to simmer. That's by geological events not humans.

I think Victoria is in for a rude shock. Having flogged Bass gas for decades and by not replacing the remaining Latrobe Valley coal stations it won't have a controllable power supply. Maybe SA disease will slowly infect all the states. There's always the chance that a backlash will see some sanity returning.

"Untouched by economic reality, here are the fantasy figures that the Victorian government is claiming as the outcome."

Only Andrews the magician could produce such fantasy.

Poor South Australia! The reliability of Victoria as a standby power source, will be much reduced.

Every boy and his dog knows that uranium based power is significantly dearer than coal! Needs very expensive and problematic decommissioning after 25-50 years!

Whereas, thorium reactors can be left almost unattended to percolate away for as long as 100 years! Thorium promises everything fusion promised but couldn't deliver!

Uranium at best, only uses 10% of its fuel type. Leaving 90%+ as highly toxic nuclear waste, with a half life somewhere north of 10.000 years!

Yes we mine and sell uranium. But ignore three times more abundant thorium, which was the fifties nuclear power, whose name can no longer be mentioned and only abandoned after hugely successful trials, (N.B. Aidan) during the seventies. Because it couldn't be weaponized!

If GM were to run a prototype new engine round a testing track 24/7 for five years plus, without accident or incident without noticeable wear! Any reasonable person would concede it had been very successfully, thoroughly road tested!

Moreover. it threatened all fossil fuel markets and big nuclear alike. Given the security guard out front costs more than the fuel and the far less toxic waste is eminently suitable as longlife space batteries. Which burn up with reentry!

I agree with Tas, we ought opt for baseload industrial nuclear power as the only way forward. But only numbskulls would opt for uranium and another fukushima or chernobyl, at any time, without warning or notice! When walk away safe, much much less costly thorium, which can be deployed anywhere, beckons!

And doesn't necessarily need water or the great white elephant of a costly energy wasting national grid! Which can and does waste upto 75% of the energy we push into it! And the mugs out there in mugsville are the ones paying for all of it!

Time to tip this trough and force the snouts thrust into it, for doing very little, to take their free loading elsewhere!
Alan B.

During the post war era, we went from a war torn basket case economy, generating around 3500 MW's of power to one generating ten times that and grew an economy the envy of most of the world! Via publicly owned and operated power! That's all!

Politics, the art of the possible was suspended for a time and became the art of the impossible.

Arguably because there was no other choice and Leaders who knew just how close we'd been to becoming a foreign possession! Knew we had to have a vibrant robust manufacturing sector to call our own and just for security guarantees!

Since then it's all been largely downhill and we've had all manner of hands on the wheel.

Some visionless to the point, where the only remedy was to sell the family farm and heirloom silver! And just to buy votes!

Why even one "PM" tried to sell the snowy mountains scheme to bulk up inland revenue. And failed to understand that a power station, a bank, a telco, an airline, all built and paid for by preceding, blood sweat and tears, sacrificing generations! Can only be sold once and the assured income (billions) they provided had to be made good elsewhere! For us as expanding debt and a growing structural deficit.

Today we stand at a crossroad, do we use more of the same and drown in debt for largely unrepayable debt serviced, recurrent spending?

Or do we just bite the bullet and use that debt to build stuff that will, #1 sevice all the debt obligations incurred and #2 create more jobs than we have people to fill them! And #3 roll out affordable power that multiplies power generation by the power of ten!

Then use that and the cash flow it generates to roll out space age desal to not just drought proof the joint but turn arid wasteland/the dead heart, into veritable gardens of eden. Now that's change we can all believe in! EXCEPT THOSE CHARGED/TASKED WITH CREATING IT!?
Alan B.

Alan B.,

Decommissioning of nuclear reactors is going to be very cheap when World Nuke Dump Oz gets going.

All because of John W Howard's visit to the US, where the very persuasive US State Department squired him about and JWH suddenly evolved (sic) as Uncle Sam's No1 spruiker, bar none, for Oz to be the glow-in-the-dark dumping ground for Uncle Sam's nuke waste and anyone else's too if they stood in line next.

'Nek minit', there was JWH lecturing amazed Canadians, the world, on the joys of others' nuke waste, and back home his fellow Libs were in shock.

So there you go, Uncle Sam always had a safe (for the US) disposal strategy. They just needed a 'Little Deputy' to show up on the horizon one day.

But isn't that what a good mate such as Uncle Sam should do to another mate in these 'Progressive' times? Y'know, bend the other fellow over and give him a good nuking up the back passage er, make that 'a cradle to grave' rogering. Um, that will not do either, but doubtless the good old boys and more importantly the very convincing girls of the US State Department will come up with the right words (and maybe that former Oz PM's lost trousers too).

Walk away safe, molten salt thorium reactors can be tasked with burning and reburning Uncle Sam's nuclear waste again and again; anyone else's for that matter; and be paid annual (5 10 15) billions a part of the deal for thousands of years. While we extract every remaining erg of energy out of it, as costless energy!

Then bury it very safely in the ground that first gave it up, with a remaining half life of just 300 years!

The misinformed just need to stop obsessing and move on. One or two more chernobyls would be disastrous for certain, but it's carbon threatening planet wide, total annihilation!

Without question we're tiptoeing just ahead of an irreversible tipping point that quite literally means, stop burning fossil fuels now today and without destroying the very economies that feed, house, clothe and educate us/ours!

Time for business as usual prevarication/obfuscation to end and action to start! If you can't or won't help! Get out of the way.

For years big tobacco mislead the world on the dangers of tobacco!

It seems fossil fuel company scientists are/have been reporting privately internally, that climate change is real and they're causing some of it. Yet like big tobacco, [Jenny,NB,] have a different, manifestly mendacious message for Joe public!


Moreover, buried in a compound invented here, rockcrete. Much like completely inert volcanic glass, impervious to both acid and alkaline solutions alike, with remaining waste sealed and providing less rads than equally buried igneous rock.

My backyard would be fine!

Why, the average Joe would be exposed to more whole of life radiation in just one international flight between here and Britain, or an annual chest xray!

Any reactor, would still need more than adequate shielding and robotics to add the nuclear waste to the flow sheet or remove the miracle cure isotopes.

Molten salt boils at 1200C or thereabouts. Whereas the useful target range achieved by molten salt reactors ranges between 750C and 950C, meaning no special containment vessel need be built!
Alan B.

Only a moron or a liar would claim that additional renewables will reduce electricity prices.

ENERGY, TWO AND A HALF TIMES LOWER IN AMERICA! How come?

Well they have this thing called competition, while we have government sponsored or encouraged monolithic monopolies. And a great white elephant called of all things, a national grid!

Moreover, the yanks allow R.O.M., coal for baseload power and to hell with the foreseeable environmental consequences! We for our part export uranium!

And dream of one day becoming the world's storehouse of problematic nuclear waste. Nuclear waste that can be reprocessed and reprocessed very safely, in walk away safe, molten salt thorium reactors. To produce virtually costless energy, where and when we want it, for virtually any purpose, including extracting Carbon from seawater.

[While we earn international annual billions for providing the service!]

Then thanks to nuclear energy, able to combine it with hydrogen to make all manner of useful and endlessly sustainable hydrocarbons for exportable fuel, plastics and fertilizer!

And rebuild a new and vibrant, lowest costing, metals smelting industry, with the world's lowest carbon footprint!

All absolutely reliant on affordable safe nuclear energy!

None safer than walk away safe, molten salt, thorium reactors!

[Just not doable with the current government or their opposition, that's all, nothing else!?]

Which then make things like very successfully field trialled, new spage age deionization dialysis desalination, even cheaper and much more affordable. So much so and to the point, where we could not just drought proof Australia, but turn her arid heartland into our most productive agribusinesses!

And in the process become a veritable food bowl for a hungry world. And in the leading by example solution, create a template for a drought ravaged world. That will enable 5-60 million displaced people be safely resettled on former deserts, once more productive ground.

And as that occurs, end poverty, hunger, want and the conflicts that flow from all that.
Alan B.