I think the precautionary principle demands at least a footnote in your list of points, Graham, unless you are absolutely certain AGW is bunkum.

There's nothing lost in waiting for SMR's to prove themselves while preparing the ground for their acceptance here, or, going with conventional reactors, perhaps built by Koreans who have it down pat.

Building a renewables plus gas bridge towards extremely expensive 100% renewables for the next ten years is pointless. Waiting is more affordable, financially and in international competitiveness, while the difference in emissions between doing something and doing nothing is negligible.

With all due respect Steele, the article your comments are based on is one of the stupidest I have read. Apparently because the author's father could barter a chook for a crayfish the author knows more about developing multi-billion dollar gas wells and selling billions of dollars of gas to overseas customers than people whose business it is to do this..

This is merely one development on the north-west shelf, with lots of gas being exported to other countries, particularly Japan. And lots more being available for domestic use.

From an east coast perspective, which is where the problem is, the West Coast gas can be used to solve the shortage, at a price - the price of transport. There are two or three projects to transship, or pipe, gas from WA to the east to solve the problem.

But there is plenty of gas on the east coast to meet the need, so why aren't you pointing the finger at the Victorian and NSW governments that are restricting the extraction of this gas and which would be cheaper because it doesn't have as significant a transport element?

Whatever the deal that was done with the Chinese, it wasn't because the developers - a consortium including BHP, Woodside, Chevron and Shell - "forgot" to put a price escalation in.

The Chinesse took equity in this deal, and it was huge for the time. A long term gas contract was probably necessary to get financing; a good price a reward for the equity the Chinese took, and the commitment; and the whole deal strategic to get a foothold into the market. 1/2

2/2 I'm sure the return to the investors would have been positive at those prices, and Howard was right not to try to impose government control over private negotiations. To see how bad the commonwealth is at commerce you have to look no further than the NBN. It's arrogance to suggest that someone with no skin in the game - a politician - is going to make a better and wiser decision than someone who does.

The article is a good reason why Fairfax is being taken over by Nine - it's devoid of useful information and pushes a self-indulgent idiosyncratic line by the author.

Hi Luciferase, my judgement on global warming has always been that the arguments about whether it is manmade are an important issue, and the corruption of science and scientific institutions has been massive, but they are essentially a side-show.

Unless we could convince India and China that they should not have the same standard of living as we in the west, emissions were always going to increase, so we are going to discover what a higher CO2 world looks like, whether we like it or not.

In which case we need to protect our standard of living. So I have no problem with nuclear, apart from the issues of disposal, which I think are largely over-stated. But it is not the cheapest form of electricity, which is reflected in the fact that the Chinese are developing far more coal than they are nuclear or intermittents, but they do have nuclear as part of the mix.

We should probably be looking to mimic the spread of energy sources in places like China and Korea, as they are competitors for refining, processing and manufacturing of minerals and goods.

But don't worry too much. If the catastrophists thought the world really was at risk from CO2 they'd be hollering for nuclear too. Instead they are mucking around with technologies that couldn't run Hobbiton to an acceptable level.

In any event, the precautionary principle has nothing much to do with our emissions of CO2, because even if they dropped to zero, it wouldn't buy any meaningful change in emissions, so we've changed nothing. The precautionary principle can only apply where inaction has a consequence.

Graham, the band members on the Titanic had your fatalistic approach.

In side-stepping the precautionary principle, you fail to directly state AGW to be bunkum. It's a moral argument not relegated to a mere academic question, as you suggest.

That China and India know the truth yet act as they do is no moral template for Oz to follow.

By not championing nuclear and paving the way for it, it leaves me concerned as to what degree the LNP is beholden to Big Coal lobbying. If the projected cost of nuclear approaches coal why wouldn't we follow this path to reduce emissions and wait out a few years while preparing the ground for it? Until then I can't support increasing coal or gas power beyond an immediately interim need.

Dear GrahamY,

Looks like we are going to disagree on this one completely.

It really is pretty simple, why wasn't our own government locking in gas supplies for the nation at 2002 prices until 2013?

Or even mandating 30% for domestic use as they should have done protecting both our manufacturers and jobs.

Now when the opposition propose a modest pricing trigger for export controls the howls of protest from freemarketeers are deafening.

I sat on a state government implemented committee which looked at the viability and desirability of “unconventional gas” in our section of the state. It included oil company executives and local councils. Experts were flown down to present and there were many long and involved discussions held around the table. In the end the type of extraction (fracking) was deemed unpalatable by many who participated.

As the world's largest exporter of natural gas there should be absolutely no need to put primary production and water reserves at risk in this country. Government intervention should have been justified, required and acted on. They are there to temper market excesses and perverse outcomes and both Liberal and Labour failed us.