A Victory for Turnbull?
The week-end’s Media assessment of Turnbull’s New Energy Guarantee (NEG) is generally favourable, but withTerry McCrann predicting an extremely unfavourable outcome for the Coalition viz
“Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg have made a deliberate decision to lose the next election and to lose it badly. The rest of the joint party room voted to endorse the decision, an indeterminate number of Liberal and National members voting for an early retirement. This is the irresistible and even more the irredeemable political consequence of the Turnbull-Frydenberg decision to opt for a policy of (only trying) “to keep the lights on” over a policy of significantly and quickly cutting both electricity and gas prices. Far less, the third, but first-best, option — the option, begging to be embraced by a half-rational government that had the most minimalist understanding of political dynamics — of aggressively aiming to deliver both more and more reliable power and cheaper and sustainably cheaper power”.
The New Energy Policy Has No Substance
In Wednesday’s Commentary I suggested that the explanation given by an “expert” as to how Turnbull’s NEG would work, and how NEG would save $110-115 pa in costs, was incomprehensible. This expert (John Pierce) was making the explanation at Turnbull’s request to a press conference whose attendants included Frydenberg and board members of the recently established Economic Security Board (ESB), and whose role appears to be to ensure the provision of reliable power and the achievement of the emissions reduction target of 26-28% by 2030 (the text of the press conference is now attached to Wednesday’s Commentary on my web and is a “must read”). My guess is that the two ministers put together a group of “experts” as members of the ESB who are sympathetic to the need for government intervention to reduce carbon emissions.
Assessing Turnbull’s New Energy Policy
Various developments emerging since yesterday’s Commentary suggest that the quick decision to establish a new National Energy Guarantee (NEG) may largely reflect concerns by Turnbull about his continued poor polling and that “something needs to be done” to repair that.