The Australian Government is crippling the nation with dystopian energy policies
Australia is firmly on the path towards a dystopian future with households having their access to electricity taken out of their hands and monitored, controlled and restricted by governments.
One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson said that while the nation’s world-leading energy reserves should have created a legacy of abundant cheap power for Australian households and industry we were instead heading towards a class-based third-world system in which only the wealthiest households would have 24-hour access to electricity and in which power supplies could be denied to households as either a punishment or to enforce emission reductions.
The wide roll-out of remotely-controlled energy meters (smart meters) gives retailers and governments the ability to closely monitor and completely control our energy usage. It’s only a matter of time before energy retailers start using these remote meters to switch off our power to ration dwindling domestic supplies, introduce 'economy' tariffs which restrict energy use to limited hours every day and introduce pre-paid energy plans similar to those rolled out in developing African countries with limited electricity supplies.
If this comes to pass there’s just no telling how far it will go. With governments in complete control of your electricity connection, what would stop them from punitively switching you off if you couldn’t pay a traffic fine on time? What would stop them imposing individual or household-restricted carbon budgets and turning you off when you’ve emitted your annual allotment? What would stop them making more generous electricity tariffs contingent on buying an expensive electric vehicle or using public transport?
It’s already happening right here in Queensland, with thousands of low-income households in regional areas using pre-paid 'power cards' or 'economy' tariffs in which the retailer provides power for only a few hours each day. Only the wealthiest households will be able to afford the premium tariffs which give them 24-hour access to electricity: a scenario which is already taking place in other developed countries.
It won’t stop at remote meters on houses either: they’ll also go into all our big appliances. They’re already in air conditioners – with governments and retailers able to switch them off at a whim. It will, of course, be sold to Australian households as a helpful measure to manage the cost of living and reduce carbon dioxide emissions but in reality it will lock in a class-based energy market of rich and poor, and hand even more control of our lives to our governments.
Electricity bills are tipped to increase by 50% – and gas prices by 40% – within two years, and Australia faces even more crippling energy shortages in the near future as cheap reliable power generation is continually replaced with costly unreliable renewables at enormous taxpayer expense and energy exports leave the country desperately short of domestic supplies. In the meantime, more and more Australians are finding themselves in energy debt or having their gas and power disconnected. According to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) more than 262,000 Australians are dealing with energy debt on retailer payment plans and from December 2021 to March 2022 household disconnections in Australia rose from 3977 to 9146.
We all saw the extraordinary powers and control Australian governments were able to exert during the Covid-19 pandemic and how reluctant they were to relinquish them, with some of those draconian powers now permanently enshrined in law. With Labor and the Greens in power it’s not too difficult to imagine them declaring a national energy emergency – which they themselves largely created in the first place – and imposing this dystopian nightmare of coercion and control over Australian energy consumers.
As a nation we are being led blindly into the destruction of our way of life and standard of living by State and Federal governments in their treacherous obsession with Australia saving the whole world from climate change. This present generation is the first in our history to face a reduction in living standards from the previous generation thanks to the big lie that anything this country can do to combat 'climate change' will make a difference to global emissions.
Labor's first Budget is a stark warning of things to come, and we're faced with the reality of much higher taxes. The $1500 tax offset is gone, cutting the majority of Australians’ take-home pay by $30 a week. This Budget also highlights the projected huge increases in electricity and gas prices over the next two years, yet both the Coalition and Labor blew an opportunity to increase the supply – and reduce the price – of gas in the domestic market by failing to support an amendment to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006. Many – if not most – front-bench politicians appear to be too poorly informed to make the right decisions in the best interests of their country and its people. They seem to be unaware of the rich natural-gas fields on the North-West shelf – the most productive such fields in the world – and that more than $80 billion in liquid natural gas (LNG) exports from there were generating only around $200 - 300 million in Commonwealth revenue.
We really do need to get a fair and just return for our natural resources, and for a pipeline to deliver North-West Shelf gas to east coast regions and for secure, reliable and affordable energy for Australian industry, businesses and households. Our future as a developed nation relies on it.