Come on fellers, stop coming the raw prawn.

The high cost of gas in Victoria & NSW is due to their governments moratorium on exploration for gas, & the extraction of known reserves in those states. You know it, I know it, & anyone with a brain & a bit of interest knows it.

I haven't bothered with the story in that failed state South Australia, but I think it applies there too.

There is plenty of gas available in Victoria, & the coal seam gas in their brown coal would generate cheap electricity for the state if allowed.

Put the blame where it belongs, government policy,. trying to buy a few green preferences, & the ratbag greens who cause the problem.

The heading of this article and its immediate change of direction in topic, actually belies the true nature and overall damage to society, unfettered globalism and its neoliberal economic policies have inflicted.

A country now, where politicians have their head stuck in a Thatcher sand dune, with posteriors pointing to the bulging bank accounts of themselves and their mates, is, for almost a majority left behind by it, a blinding failure.

Why the concern now with local industry?
For the above suffering group locked into poverty, and the grind of multiple low paying jobs in the service industries; all that remains for a near majority, is more of the same: An outcome most assured in the coming election.

It's also a myth to blame Liberals totally, for the decline of unionism, the historic friend of the worker, and the bastion of a fair go, and a redistribution of wealth towards progress, for the class most disaffected by the collapse of local industry, it was Labor. A Labor distaste for the deplorable class, it did its utmost in creating, is currently prefixed by a truely deplorable scum-bag, a master of treason, Shorten.

A vote for that? Not in my ant nest!

Until recent times, Australia's great comparative advantage in regards to manufacturing has been low energy costs. A decade ago, our electricity costs were at or near the lowest in the world and this translated into swathes of manufacturing industries taking advantage of that factor.

But after being bitten by the great Global Warming bug, governments of both persuasions have frittered away that comparative advantage and industries, one after another, have succumb. To be fair, those who perpetrated this disaster didn't do it knowingly. They were convinced by so-called experts that the costs of fighting the CO2 demon were relatively light. Remember Rudd saying that it would cost the equivalent of a cuppa a week?
We are still being assured that the experts have the answer to lower electricity costs and the leadership remains desperate to be beguiled.

That manufacturing is falling off a cliff can hardly be denied. Over the past 5 years, employment in manufacturing has declined by 10.6% (most of that in the past year) while total employment has rises by just under 10%. Consequently the proportion of manufacturing employment in the economy has fallen from 7.8% to 6.7% or by 17%. And all of that is accelerating.

Its feasible that a nation can survive or even prosper without having a viable manufacturing sector (eg Singapore) but such a nation doesn't need and can't afford a massive immigration programme. Indeed immigration is sold as being something we need to remain prosperous. But if our wealth is derived from mining and agriculture, then raw numbers of people aren't required.

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The political classes have a tiger by the tail. They can't afford to renounce the jihad against CO2 which causes the decline manufacturing but equally can't afford to draw the obvious conclusions that a nation based on primary industries doesn't need a large population. So they avoid addressing either and kick the problems down the road.

A reckoning will come especially as we seem to be also now turning against those very same primary industries that are the only thing allowing us to retain a first world standard of living. That we suppress a fracking revolution even while the USA remakes itself on the back of that same fracking is indicative of how insane our policy contradictions have become.

The reckoning will be painful and it will come, when it comes, with a rush that will create massive cleavages in society. Already we are seeing an election being fought over the current pie rather than one arguing how to increase the pie. As things unravel, there will be battles over how the pain is to be distributed.

We avoided becoming the poor white trash of Asia once. I'm not sure we'll be so lucky this time.

Hasbeen?

Seriously? YOU think I'M coming the raw prawn?

Supposing all restrictions on gas extraction were lifted, but no export restrictions were imposed: do you think that would result in the gas companies selling the gas here for less than they can get for selling it on the export market? If so, why?

Why is it so hard for you to comprehend that the answer that seems obvious is not always correct?

BTW there's plenty of fracking done in SA, despite there currently being a moratorium in part of the state's southeast because of valid concerns about the impact on groundwater.

We avoided becoming the poor white trash of Asia once. I'm not sure we'll be so lucky this time.
mhaze,
You're on the nail there ! Even the education Dept is working towards that outcome. If Labor/Green/utter Left get in, it'll be completed !