This is yet another phoney beat up by the left to resist changes to their stupid legislation.

In 2000 when the RET target was introduced, renewables were about 5% of the generation mix. Today 14 years later renewables are just less than 10%. If the coalition reinstates the target to 20% (the bipartisan target), the requirement is to add about 2% renewables every year at about 5x the rate of the last 6 years. The suggestion that renewable workers will suffer large scale retrenchment is laughable.

Keeping Labor's partisan target of 28%, however, will push the annual requirement for new generation to 3.4% p.a. which is nearly as much as has been installed in the last decade, and most likely exceeds the ability of the industry to achieve.

Lisa Singh, I understand your desire to push the party line, but please don't lie to us in the future.

Lisa, may I suggest that had your beloved labor government not wasted so much on project failure after failure, perhaps we would find our selves, pretty much where we were back in 06, where we could have our cake, and eat it.

Then there is the border protection fiasco, once again the product of sheer arrogance and incompetence, arrogance in that Rudd, almost single handedly created the mess, and incompitance, in that Gillard and crew were out of their depth and couldn't fix it.

So now, as a token of their incompitance, the Abbott government (or labor for that matter had they not been chucked out on their ear) have inherited this mess, which includes about $14 million each month, just in welfare payments to those uninvited guests who are awaiting processing. It's just a pity our own pensioners can't get treated like that, hey!

So, we live in a world where you can have everything you want, provided you can afford it and, the problem is, we just can't afford it.

Now just on solar, how many jobs do you suggest will be retained once the construction phase is complete. Very few I would suggest. While it's all well and good to want to save the planet, we must also save the people on it and, the best way to save them is to make sure they have jobs and can support themselves. As our coal industry is a major support of jobs, both directly and indirectly, loosing that industry would have catorstofic consequences for our economy, and of cause, if the likes of the greens get their way, that industry won't be the last they try to shut down.

Yes Lisa;
Very strange, made more so, by the fact, some of these endlessly sustainable options are very much cheaper than what we are using now!
Moreover, they either don't add to the carbon load, can actually sequester carbon; and, produce a handsome return while doing just that!
As opposed to asking the tax payer to front up with finite funds for trillion dollar pipelines and such!
And the reason some economists are turned off the so called alternatives.
Let's forget about solar and wind for a moment, and just concentrate on cheaper than coal, thorium, of even cheaper biogas to power, at a local level.
Every family produces enough waste to completely power their homes or domiciles; and indeed, if you add in food scraps/waste, and gas consuming ceramic fuel cells; a very sizable salable surplus!
Why not keep these funds, but use them as a gradually growing pool that finances money earning adaptation.
i.e., some homes could use these funds, as very low cost, total alternative, endlessly sustainable biogas to energy conversion loans!
Of course the fossil fuel industry are going to scream like stuck pigs, given the sales reductions are already hurting them.
And their own stupid fault, for pricing their own customers out of the market!
And given that's their only solution, bankruptcy awaits!
I just don't have any sympathy for price gouging debt laden foreigners, who bought some of our energy producing essential service, and then expected us to completely fund their purchases, via premium prices!
The current Government is already in really deep do do, and can only harm their electoral prospects even further, by proceeding with any more of this patent economic madness or vandalism!
They really are confronted by just two very stark and electoral changing choices!
Side with us the energy consuming voters, who are already picking up their allegorical baseball bats, or the conventional power industry/their current retirement options!
Rhrosty.

As an afterthought, these loans just don't need to be paid for, with larger sums, than current 1-2-3,000 dollar a year power bills!
Meaning, almost anyone, could currently afford them!? Or might just have to make the current family jalopy, do another five or six year turn by which time, the money saved and or earned, from the energy conversion, could buy a brand newie!?
Rhrosty.

When you read this article, you've got to remember that dunderheads and socialists count people digging holes and filling them in again as "creating jobs".

All renewable energy policies are just different versions of shining lights generated from coal-fired power stations onto solar panels, collecting the subsidies, and claiming that what you're doing is more "sustainable", as well as morally superior. It's nothing but confused thought, with a (large) dollop of fake piety to boot

Rhosty,

Stop kidding yourself, renewables are far more expensive than normal generation. Why do you think our electricity bills are soaring?