IN his new memoir Kevin Rudd reveals his vision for Australia when he became PM: “Julia [Gillard] and I now shared a common project, which was ridding the country of Howard and all his works.”

Well, if they succeeded at nothing else, Rudd and Gillard were champions at wrecking Howard’s legacy, trashing the nation’s finances and confidence for at least a generation.

They blew Howard’s surplus on pink batts, school halls and $900 cheques to dead people. They dismantled border protection and packed the electorate with armies of new Labor-voting welfare recipients.

They embedded poison pills in future Coalition budgets: the $50 billion white elephant of the National Broadband Network famously devised on the back of a beer coaster; the annual $22 billion welfare leviathan of the National Disability Insurance Scheme; billions on the Gonski education package for no discernible benefit; child care reengineered to suit unions which sent costs skyrocketing for families.

But Rudd’s crowning glory was dysfunctional climate policy of the last decade. Climate change in his hands became the “great moral challenge of our time” and in 10 years Australia has gone from having almost the cheapest energy in the world to among the most expensive.

Rudd destroyed the model of low cost coal-fired power that had underpinned our prosperity. And all for nothing. We could have shut down the country and lived in caves for the past decade for all the difference it would have made to the climate.

Australia produces 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. We’re 16th in the world, after China, the US, the EU, India, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Germany, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. The top three emitters contribute more than half of total global emissions, the top 10 account for nearly three-quarters. It doesn’t matter what Australia does.

We wrecked our energy advantage for nothing.

You see the stark evidence in the 37 page Powerpoint presentation Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg showed last week to the Coalition party room.

The first slide is a graph of retail electricity prices over time. The soaring trajectory shows Labor’s culpability.

From 2004 to 2007 prices rose about 15 per cent. Then, with Rudd’s election in 2007, the trajectory turned near exponential, a carbon tax kicked in and prices more than doubled.

With the election of the Abbott government in 2013 and the repeal of the carbon tax, prices dipped 20 per cent before rising back to peak levels again in mid-2016, as government subsidies for renewables distorted the market, along with an investment strike on coal, and greenie bans on gas.

Worse still, the more we paid, the less reliable was our energy supply. South Australia is the poster child of Australia’s climate dysfunction, with the most expensive electricity in the country and blackouts which would shame a third world country.

It’s a mess.

Which is why the Turnbull government’s patchwork solution of the National Energy Guarantee unveiled last week is, a master-stoke of pragmatism and common sense.

Frydenberg’s plan effectively ends subsidies for renewables, boosts investment with built in reliability, and could eventually lower prices.

It mandates that electricity retailers in each state provide a minimum percentage of reliable dispatchable power — as in coal and gas or stored energy in hydro or batteries — to avoid blackouts when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

It still gives the Coalition a big point of difference with Labor on which to fight an election. It sticks with the renewable energy target legislated by the Abbott government in 2015 of 23.5 per cent by 2020, which is 95 per cent achieved anyway, while Labor is locked into an unsustainable RET of 50 per cent.

Coal and gas will still be 64-72 per cent of our energy mix in 2030 compared with 39 per cent under Labor.

Much as we would prefer Australia had nothing to do with the Paris climate treaty, again the Abbott government made a commitment in 2015 of a 26 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and good citizens don’t walk away from deals.

But those reductions can be postponed for a decade while technology advances. Meanwhile, Labor is stuck with a 45 per cent emissions reduction promise.

It is up to the states to endorse the plan at next month’s COAG meeting. But Frydenberg has left them with little choice.

“If a state tries its own RET, any abatement it achieves is simply counted towards achieving the national emissions target. Such a state risks its own reliability for no gain in emissions outcome”.

Frydenberg’s miraculous feat has been to win support from industry and almost universal approval of the party room, which actually broke into applause after his presentation.

If we were starting from scratch we wouldn’t be here. But politics is only the art of the possible, and there are no good options left. We can’t go back to 2007 and unscramble Rudd’s egg.

It’s like making a bad investment. You can wallow in your loss and cry for what might have been. Or you can put it behind you and get on with living.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/rudds-climate-mess-may-be-frydenberg...

thecuriousmail wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2017 at 8:05am:


How do you come to that conclusion? He paid off Keatings' $96bn debt, left the country with a $22bn surplus, set up the future fund, introduced the GST, overhauled the taxation system and oversaw a huge increase in private health fund membership that took the pressure off the states' public health systems. If the goal of a PM is to leave government with the country in a better position than when he became PM, then he more than succeeded. By contrast, the Prime Ministerships of Keating, Rudd, Gillard and Rudd 2.0 were unmitigated disasters that saw them leave office with the country in far worse shape than when they commenced their terms.

stunspore wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2017 at 8:09am:



at least it was FAKE>.. and not the real McCoy we saw after rudd opened our borders!

do you know how many children drowned without life jackets??..

I didnt think you did.... to busy concentrating on the FAKE ones..

macman wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2017 at 9:47am:


Yes, and it barely affected Australia.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2017 at 4:15pm:


Why was that?

Armchair_Politician wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2017 at 8:11am:

Go COPPER INTERNET:  what a joke the libs are when it comes to anything but giving assets to their mates!

Armchair_Politician wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2017 at 4:15pm:



rubbish. Demand for our products from every other country , except china, died as a result of the GFC.

You might think that's nothing but for most people that's a pretty big something. Or did you think we only export to china?