The time to reach the nominal 100% renewables is 2020. The ACT government has already awarded contracts for all the 600MW of wind farms and 40MW of solar necessary to reach the target. As Don points out, very little of this electricity will actually be used in Canberra and that the Liberals have decided to support the target. Liberal leader Jeremy Hanson justified taking this stand because the contracts were now in place. This would not have mattered.
The ACT reaches a higher level of renewable electricity than the rest of Australia not because it has these contracts but because it will take the 2.3 million large-scale generation certificates these generators will produce and effectively tear them up, thus removing them from Renewable Energy Target scheme. LGC’s currently cost $80 in the spot market. This high price is due to the fact that speculation is the target will not be met in 2020. If this happens the retailers will pay a tax effective penalty of $93 per certificate they are unable to hand to the Clean Energy Regulator.
It would be simple for an ACT Liberal government to pass legislation to have some or all of these certificates sold to retailers thus making it easier for the target to be met and have the ACT supporting a more sensible level of renewable generation. The 600MW of wind farms being built but not contributing to met the RET only makes the target harder to reach. Because of the large amount of coal fired electricity which will be fed into the ACT the retailers will also have to buy 500,000 certificates and pass this cost on to their customers.

How many from the 'Libertarian Party' are running for Office in the Canberra elections Don?

That's right, none. There is no Libertarian Party to vote for by the IPA true-believers like yourself. You're running a very different political and social engineering power strategy in Australia.

There is an obvious growth habit of the IPA, Sydney/Lowie Institutes and other fundamentalist Libertarian/Randian Ideologies that is at work. Similar to a Parasite the IPA's plan is infesting it's host organism. In Australia that is the Liberal and National Parties.

Examples of this in the Federal Parliament are James Patterson, Tim Wilson, Andrew Nikolic, George Christensen et al and of course the beloved Oxford Scholar Tony Abbott. Murdoch is the Neo-King who is all but deified.

The parasitic nature of the Libertarian operates as a hemiepiphyte, such as the Strangler Fig tree. These plants begin life as epiphytes, when their seeds, often bird-dispersed, germinate in crevices atop other trees. These seedlings grow their roots downward and envelop the host tree while also growing upward to reach into the sunlight zone above the canopy. After making contact with the ground they encircle their host tree and "strangle" it.

This usually results in the death of the host tree, either through girdling or through competition for light. The strangler fig becomes a "columnar tree" with a hollow central core. Which is a very appropriate true metaphor of the IPA - whose philosophy is to first operate covertly in the shadows, take over a Host by using it's solid foundations and access to Light (PR Marketing), slowly hollow it out and then to take it over completely, killing it in the process.

Essentially the IPA and all conservative think-tanks are following a corrupt and fraudulent irrational ideology that is fundamentally only about YOUR OWN 'power and control' and 'born to rule' beliefs and internalized attitude.

Of course you cannot see it any other way - it is a part of you all, and you'll deny it is even a belief that you adhere to.
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The Strangler Fig Movement /Con't

Your philosophy (though unspoken) is anti-Democratic to it's core! This 'pro-Democracy myth' is simply something that one has to put up with and manage in order to achieve what you want in the long term - despite how much you all truly despise it. This truth oozes from all your and others essays here.

The declared value of Individual Freedom is another Myth being sold to a public suffering under the yoke of entrenched information asymmetry about the Truth of 'conservative' (yet essentially radicalized) Think-tanks and their operatives everywhere.

It is of no surprise then the close interconnections with climate science denial and that PR machine that is poisoning the minds of the public with deception and lies - a modern day pea and shell game in plain view. Nice in theory and not a bad strategy, but it's destined to fail.

Climate change and the insidious denial of science will be your comeuppance and ultimate undoing - your own strangler fig moment is coming!

Pity you won't be around in 20 years to see it Don. But where you're going is exactly where your corrupt fraudulent anti-life anti-freedom ideology is heading.

Without genuine Empathy life is meaningless, empty and inhumane to the core.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june13-makingsense_06-21

Deep down you'll know I speak truth here. Plausible deniability wont cut it either. Been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt factory! :-)
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Were 'the people' sitting on Boards and working in the Banks, Finance, Stock markets, Corporations and 'the people' operating in big party politics already honest and ethical, there would be no need for a banking Royal Commission nor a Federal ICAC.

Eddie O'Beid wouldn't be heading for jail and nor would his many criminally corrupt like-minded friends be living in fear right now!

There is nothing more self-evidently dishonest, self-deluded, unethical and corrupt than climate science denial Don Aitkin.

Your 'days are numbered' and not simply because you're 79 years old.
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Thank you Don, but as Alan B.,[Monday, 12 September 2016 11:06:08 AM] has said: "Of very small moment to anyone living outside the A.C.T."

What interests me is: where have the proponents of "small government" gone?

Why is no one suggesting that a 25 member Assembly is about 24 too many?

I realize that while [plantagenet, Monday, 12 September 2016 1:08:42 PM] may well be speaking tongue in cheek when he says: "Canberra's voters are relatively coddled, lefty and precious.", but even if that were partly true, why not have one Chief Minister and leave the kangaroos to arrange their own affairs?