It is clear to almost everyone that new coal fired generators will be not only very polluting but much more expensive to operate than the generation of power from renewables. But the Coalition keeps pressing the case for coal . Some months ago our new Prime Minister even threw lumps of coal around the Parliament to promote coal.
Coal makes no environmental or efficiency sense. But it may make selfish political sense to promote coal in return for political donations from wealthy miners.
In an interview with Emma Alberici on the ABC,Alex Turnbull said ‘there is an undue level of influence on Liberal Party policy by a very small group of miners’
Who could he be referring to!
We do know that the Liberals are short of election funds
You join the dots after reading the edited story below from Myriam Robin in the Australian Financial Review of 30 August, 2018.
Myriam Robin
Seems Alex Turnbull had a bit on his chest.
The Singapore-based fund manager has taken his father’s exit from national politics as an opportunity to slag off organised party politics (those in political parties “are selected for low-empathy, narcissistic-spectrum personality disorder”) and the Liberal Party itself (“my father fought the stupid and the stupid won”). And to tell voters in Wentworth to give Labor’s candidate Tim Murray a chance (“it’s hard to back a Labor guy but not Tim”).
But he hasn’t been uniformly forthcoming. He’s only alluded to the role he reckons one mining titan has on Australian politics.
Asked why the Coalition was so wedded to coal-fired power, even willing to have the government fund it directly, he told the ABC’s Emma Alberici that “there is an undue level of influence on Liberal Party policy by a very small group of miners – who have some assets they probably now regret having purchased, which did not make a lot of sense any more – and are trying to engineer an outcome which makes those projects economic”…..
Pressed by Alberici(on who he meant) he gave a nervous laugh and said he was referring to “people who own a lot of coal in the Galilee Basin”. …
Wonder if Malcolm Turnbull’s thinking is similar …
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
9 responses to “JOHN MENADUE Is money behind the Coalition’s addiction to coal?”
Undoubtedly; it is indeed about money but it is also about corruption of Australian liberal and conservative values as claimed by the Liberal Party. Thankfully, the Australian people have the nous to deal with both.
I hope with all my heart that your trust in the Australian people is justified, but, alas, I am not so confident judging by the political events of the lest years.
“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around….All economic activity is dependent upon that environment and its underlying resource base of forests, water, air, soil, and minerals. When the environment is finally forced to file for bankruptcy because its resource base has been polluted, degraded, dissipated, and irretrievably compromised, the economy goes into bankruptcy with it.”
USA Senator Gaylord Nelson,
Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise (2002)
Well, she’s bought the IPA. Why not the Lib/Nats too?
GINA………………..
wonder what her dad would think of her now?
Talk about the price of the Earth.
I’m no political expert, but I can’t think of any other reason for Adani’s bid still being considered apart from money.
The Libs will have a lot less funds now they’ve shafted their Cayman Island donor, John.
Of course it is all about money! Also the understanding that coal as a major export has a limited life span as more and more countries go to cheaper forms of energy namely renewables. So the coal has to be sold now and what better way to sell it but to Australian consumers forced to buy coal generated energy by a government that not only won’t invest in renewables, not only doesn’t care about emissions and the long term future but is willing to build coal fired generators to keep its donors happy.