Telling to watch the interview of Greens Leader Richard diNatale by Annabelle Crabbe.
Richard is a plausible blokey ex-footballer-GP with a penchant for employing au pairs as domestics and charging taxpayers for them to travel to provide nannying service in Canberra. Fine, within the rules I am sure.
Of course at his off the grid hideaway he has a petrol generator he "hardly ever uses".
People can afford to live off the grid here because the economy generates enough wealth to support a large number of leaners, off the less than half of the population (lifters) who actually pay a nett tax.
That economy is the largest exporter of uranium, iron ore, coal and gas. Yet our wholesale power prices are 3 X what they were 5 yr ago.
Our industrial base has narrowed sharply, as manufacturers like Holden, Toyota, Alcoa Point Henry smelters, Arrium Steel are priced out of the market. They were viable at one time due to our low energy costs. That is historic now. Thus a lot of high wage jobs disappeared, and now the resources construction phase has ended we have an economy surviving on immigration induced housing construction, defence shipbuilding (jobs for SA) and financed by borrowing from future generations.
The last people to suffer in a downturn are the public sector elites in Canberra who demand an electric lightrail to complement their impressive 100% renewable generation base. If Canberra cut its connection to the East Coast grid, they would find, like SA, that they need to invest in fossil generation. Simultanoously these elites begrudge loaning money to build rail line from Galilee basin which will generate huge export income supplying grid power to Indians who currently don't have a welfare state or affordable, reliable electricity.
Good luck charging the batteries from wind and solar sources.
An economist I respect explained that you cannot have high wages and high energy prices in Australia. Seems to me we are proving that right now. No wonder people have trouble buying a house, they don't earn the wages relative to the foreign investors they are competing with. Most of these investors are middle class parents who value education leading to high wage jobs and prepared to pay full fees to get their hard working kids through our Universities.
The main reason they come is to learn English --the academic standards are falling fast, and meanwhile the Australian students are content to charge the fees to HECS that many won't ever repay because they made poor course choices or have poor work ethic.
