SOUTH Australia’s Big Green Dream has been badly dented with the state’s Liberal Party passing for a motion calling on the federal Liberal Party to end net zero.
“Today (last Saturday) the governing body of the South Australian Liberal Party voted to call upon the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party to rescind their policy of Net Zero by 2050,” Senator Alex Antic posted on X. The graphic (inset) was posted with the comment.
Senator Antic’s announcement sent waves of panic through the political and media establishment, with only “right wing media” announcing it. The ABC appeared to have ignored the story but on Friday ran a story citing Liberal Party MPs who “fear a looming discussion within the Coalition about net zero might damage the party politically”.
But in the limp-wristed fashion typical of the “Tealy” types who inhabit the Liberal Party, the SA Liberal leader Vincent Tarzia tried to downplay it, telling reporters that ‘none of these policy discussions bind any of the parliamentary wings of the party’.
South Australia’s Energy and Mining Minister Tom Koutsantonis accused Senator Antic of taking over the SA Liberals. “While ordinary South Australians are worried about the cost of living and ensuring their kids have a good job and a good home, the South Australian Liberals are obsessing over the culture wars,” he said.
Koutsantonis failed to mention that ordinary South Australians now have the highest energy costs in the nation, thanks to their so-called 100% renewables electricity system backed up by gas turbine electricity.
Last March, 20,000 homes and businesses around the Yorke Peninsula and mid-north of the state were left without power after a major power outage caused by a failure in the complex renewables network.
Broadcaster Ben Fordham weighed into the story, telling listeners that between 2012 the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) did not once intervene in the national energy market because it had virtually no renewables except for some hydro.
But with increasing wind and solar supply the system has become increasingly unstable and by 2017 the number of AEMO market interventions to prevent blackouts jumped to around 100. By 2021 the interventions hit 400 and by 2024, 1300 interventions or more than three a day.
The green “news service” Renew Economy reported on the decision describing Senator Antic as “far right” and reminded its reader that five years ago, when in government, the Liberals set the target of reaching 100 per cent net renewables by 2030.
“It was a stunning ambition, and unrivalled in the world because in South Australia, renewables means wind and solar and storage, as there is no hydro and no geothermal power,” editor Giles Parkinson enthused. He also failed to mention the state’s soaring power prices.
He went on to claim that the plan announced by the Liberals “progressed so well that early last year, the re-elected Labor government accelerated the 100 per cent net renewables target to 2027, and later enshrined it in law as part of its Climate Change Act.”
Parkinson claims “the target is still on track”, with the state averaging 72 per cent wind and solar over the last 12 months, and with the new Goyder South wind project, the state’s biggest, ramping up with “a fleet of new big batteries due to join the grid”. No doubt South Australians can’t wait.
Parkinson says meeting that target on schedule will likely depend on the ability of the new link to South Australia, Project Energy Connect, being completed on time. It will allow a total of 800 MW to be imported or exported on its lines.
“The federal Coalition now finds itself at odds over net zero, with elements of both the federal Liberal party and the Nationals pushing for the scrapping of net zero targets for 2050 – considered to be the bare minimum Australia, and the rest of the world, needs to achieve in its efforts on climate change,” wrote Parkinson repeating the “climate change” mantra as if it’s a law of nature.
Parkinson went on to shed tears over Queensland abandoning the previous Labor government’s carbon targets and the axing of a previously approved $1 billion wind project last week.
