Cautionary Australian tale of real genius

Australian heavy industry

Back in the chaotic dying days of the Whitlam-Cairns-Connor government, Canberra was buzzing with Rex Connor’s grand plans for a national energy grid and gas pipelines linking the NW Shelf to the capital cities, all to be funded by massive foreign loans arranged by a mysterious Pakistani named Khemlani. Malcolm Fraser staged a parliamentary revolt. The economy slumped. A British observer at the time noted, “Any fool can bugger up Britain but it takes real genius to bugger up Australia.”

Once again, Australian politicians are showing real genius.

There are incredible tri-partisan plans to cover the continent with a spider web of transmission lines connecting wind and solar “farms” sending piddling amounts of intermittent power to distant consumers and to expensive battery and hydro backups, all funded by electricity consumers, tax-assisted speculators and foreign debt.

We are the world’s biggest coal exporter but have not built a big coal-fired power station for eleven years. We have massive deposits of uranium but 100% of this energy is either exported, sterilized by the Giant Rainbow Serpent [a god in Aboriginal mythology] or blocked by the Greens.

Australia suffers recurrent droughts but has not built a major water supply dam for about 40 years, and the average age of our hydroelectric plants is 48 years. When the floods do come, desperate farmers watch helplessly as years of rain water rush past to irrigate distant oceans.

Once, Australia was a world leader in exploration and drilling—it is now a world leader in legalism, red tape and environmental obstructionism.

Once, Canberra and the states encouraged oil and gas exploration with geological mapping and research—now they restrict land access and limit exports.

‘Fairy story’ that we change the climate

Once, Australia was a world leader in refining metals and petroleum—now our expensive, unreliable electricity and green tape are driving these industries and their jobs overseas.

Once, Australia’s CSIRO was respected for research that supported industry and for doing useful things like controlling rabbits and prickly pear and developing better crops and pastures. Now CSIRO panders to global warming hysteria and promotes the fairy story that carbon taxes and emissions targets can change the world’s climate.

Once, young Australians excelled in maths, science and engineering. Now they are brain-washed in gender studies, green energy non-science and environmental activism.

Once, the opening of a railway or the discovery of oil, coal, nickel or uranium made headlines. Today’s Aussies harass explorers and developers, and queue at the release of the latest iPad.

As Australia’s first people discovered, if today’s Australians lack the will or the knowledge to use our great natural resources, more energetic people will take them off us.

Viv Forbes
vforbes [at] bigpond.com
Washpool,  Qld, Australia.

Views: 208