Belly,

It's not a matter of one side is always right and the other always wrong, it has to be who has the guts to do the right thing - for all the people, for industry (jobs), for the economy (to pay for education, health, childcare, aged-care, welfare, housing, population growth, etc), and for the environment, and national security.

50% electric vehicles - which will have to be in the cities and urban areas, while rural folks will probably have to go gas conversion, truckies and farmers with tractors will need to go bio-fuel, and some folks will need a bike.

Oz' climate change impact - with or without electric vehicles? Zilch.
(What is needed is to take the big international 'polluters' to task.)

Labor has done some GREAT things - under various leaders - Whitlam, Hawke, Keating.
But, not under Rudd or Gillard.

Medicare, Compulsory Superannuation, lower education fees (free University fees under Whitlam - for a while - but at the expense of what?).

On the other side, what a potential mess a Lib Gov under John Hewson could have been.

Howard introduced GST - at more than a little opposition - but this has arguably been a great step forward for benefit of the states' and territories' tax income, and has reduced various taxes including income tax - with all consumers sharing in providing the funds needed for infrastructure and services everywhere.

The Libs also sent us to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan - but only to maintain our alliance commitments to the US.
(Without US backing Oz would be easy pickings, and have almost no say in international affairs.)

Shorten also offers uncapped, cheap, 5-year Renewable Visas for family reunion - but under what conditions? Health? 'Visitors' who may become pregnant in Oz? Impacts on services?
And why? Courting votes from immigrants - and do they even have to be nationalised Oz citizens to apply?

So, population growth is not an issue?

Big money splash, hither and thither, but without a clear visionary plan, and without verifiable costings.

Utopia? Or to hell in a hand-basket?

Continued:

Belly, and also to Foxy,

Oz' climate change impact - with or without electric vehicles? Zilch.
(What is needed is to take the big international 'polluters' to task.)

But, some poo-hoo Bob Brown - but he managed some great achievements for the Tasmanian environment and tourism.
Is the environment important? For the black-throated finch, Plains Wanderer, Koala, Wombat, or Eastern Quoll, eg.?
What a poor and odd world it would be without 'critters', ancient forests, and even bees?

Does anyone believe that those concerned about climate change are not also deeply concerned about the environment? After-all, mitigations can be taken against rising sea levels, droughts, floods and hurricanes - to protect people.
But what about the impacts on environment and species of increasing land and sea temperatures, oceanic pollution, and over population leading to land clearing, resource exploitation and many more unemployed?

A substantial renewables industry could certainly be a boon for jobs - in solar, wind and hydro, and for the economy. But, it should be on the basis of what is best for Oz, including meeting Kyoto/Paris abatement commitments by providing services in our overall best interests.

Coal? I'm still waiting for someone to take up the universal scrubbing of coal-fire power station emissions, and diversion of the CO2 into industry-sized multi-level greenhouses to supply all our major cities with all the veggies they could ever want.

I'm also waiting for someone to take up the diversion of excess northern runoff rainfall to the south (in WA and Qld) through pipes, canals, artesian basin - to provide both flood and drought mitigation, and to provide for the establishment of massive solar-powered greenhouse farms in our semi-arid inland regions reasonably adjacent to major coastal population centres.

Development to our overall national benefit, and mitigating greenhouse emissions as a by-product.

Future vision, not smoke-screens or pipe-dreams.

Oz needs to run its own race.

Dear Saltpetre,

I won't go into all the achievements of the Rudd-Gillard
government with you here. There were many. From seeing
us through the GFC to establishing the NDIS and the Royal
Commission into child sexual abuse, to name just a few
things. However, climate change is a huge problem and
can no longer be brushed aside by bringing a lump of
coal into parliament or laughing the matter off.
The following link explains:

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/07/climate-change-takes-centre-stage-in-australias-election

COAL yes it has impacts on this election
Unless something very big happens either side, on winning, will let the big one go ahead
My reason for not letting it is very different, in my view the company behind it can not be trusted, tax arrangements are shonky, we nearly, in the the end, in the short term, pay then to take it
Reality in my view is we will run out of coal, too run out of buyers
That can not be further than 100 years away
So sell it use it but do not let it kill renewables
The science is right and like it or not luddites will not change growing convictions that is true
On the issue of the environment Scomo has saddled up the ageing clerk of the courses horse ,pandering only to his right wing while Winks walks on to the track

Hi Foxy, the vested interests of Big Oil, Big Coal, etc could not argue against the science, so they chose to turn it into a political argument, and attack the messengers. The group in society most easily spooked are conservative people. It was no accident that conservative politicians pushed the anti climate change line, being beholding as they are to those vested interests. They found it relatively easy to create sceptics among their supporters. Now even those sceptics are starting to turn, and are realising climate change is real, and something must be done. Although the politicians beholding to Big Coal and Big Oil will do their best to put up some kind of phoney pretence of doing something through some soppy halfhearted nonsense, on the issue, and that's what Morrison and the Liberal party are attempting to do.

To me its a bit like the smoking causes lung cancer argument, that kicked off in the 1950's. When medical research established the link between smoking and lung cancer, the tobacco companies tried to denigrate the research and those involved. Then they turned to the nonsense argument of smokers rights and personal freedoms. All smoke screens to cloud the argument and prolong the agony. Fortunately although their tactics cost million of lives the truth eventually won out, and fag companies paid a token price through lost profits.

Luciferase, I go with the truth, not the rhetoric and spin.
Germany does place a higher value on supply reliability than most nations, but your claim that "100% fossil-fueled backup contingency is needed 24/7/365" would be dubious even if you hadn't claimed it to be "on top of its extension cords to French nuclear... and Nordic hydro". Why do you think international sources don't reduce the amount of fossil fuelled backup required? And why specify those sources in particular rather than Swiss hydro and Swedish nuclear?

Some people will oppose anything, but most of the people who oppose nuclear power do so for rational reasons.

SA does have quite a lot of diesel driven peaking equipment,much of it predating our wind turbines and solar panels. But although both of SA's interconnectors go to Victoria, and Victoria generates a large (though falling) proportion of its electricity from brown coal, your attempt to spin it as "interconnection to Victorian coal" is disingenuous because SA is a net exporter of electricity.

The Hornsdale battery isn't a 5 minute battery. Its output capacity is 10 minutes at 70MW plus three hours at 30MW. As for its cost, that's easy enough to find out with Google: $90m. See http://reneweconomy.com.au/revealed-true-cost-of-tesla-big-battery-and-its-government-contract-66888/

It's not the only big battery in the state now, and I've no doubt we will get more big batteries built and pumped storage as well. But the state is relying on private investors for this, and at the moment they're a bit nervous because of Snowy 2.0 plans. Meanwhile the installation of home scale batteries is being encouraged.

I don't know where you get this silly "shrinking pie" notion from, but Australia gets abundant energy from the sun, and it's economically competitive with nuclear energy. We should have gone with nuclear power twenty years ago, but we didn't. With hindsight (as it took longer than I expected for solar power to become competitive) nuclear power may have been viable even ten years ago. But it's too late now. Though it still has a bright future internationally; many smaller and less sunny countries have high demand.