Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – South Australians have finally tired of economic misery and expensive, unreliable green electricity; the government which created the mess has just been crushed at the ballot box, 25 seats to 18.
Jay Weatherill quits as leader after losing South Australian election
Outgoing premier says he will stay on the backbench and is not interested in going to Canberra
The ousted South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, has said he will stand down as Labor leader and ruled out a switch to federal politics after losing Saturday’s state election.
“The Labor party has plenty of fantastic choices as leader, I won’t be one of them,” he told reporters on Sunday.
Weatherill would not put a timeline on the leadership change but said it would be “sooner rather than later” once the final results of the election were known.
…
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who spoke to Marshall on Sunday morning, is claiming the Liberal win in South Australia is an endorsement of his energy policy.
“Jay Weatherill said this was a referendum on energy policy,” Turnbull said in Sydney. “The people have spoken and spoken in favour of our policies, which is to support affordable and reliable energy to ensure that we can meet our Paris commitment, and at the same time ensure that we can keep the lights on and indeed afford to keep the lights on.”
But Labor’s climate and energy spokesman, Mark Butler, said the result was because the “time for change force” proved too strong.
“It was a campaign in which I think Labor can hold its head up high,” he said.
…
South Australia isn’t completely out of the woods – Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull might be crowing about the defeat of the South Australian climate extremists, but he has carbon on his hands.
Turnbull’s “affordable energy policy” includes an operational, low profile carbon market, which in my opinion looks set to extract an increasingly painful climate tithe from the pockets of ordinary Australians.
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Turnbull, my man, this is a rejection of those policies! A smarter man would read this clear message. Your “Our poison is not as strong as your poison” is an idiot’s interpretation. I’m predicting the thus far minority right wing opposition will put Turnbull in retirement. To not notice what is going on elsewhere in the world is a failing of insular dolts.
A political domino fell. Will it cause others to tip over as well?
Like dCO2/dt, only time will tell…
Up here in Canada our failed prime minister 2.0 pretty socks Trudeau is pushing for a country wide carbon tax. Our taxpayer funded CBC, think ABC, BBC, a PR machine for Trudeau and the liberals has been ramping up reporting of dire (climate change) missinformation in support of the carbon tax.
Trudeau has a thing for socks.
Hasn’t fear been a factor in the present situation in Canada? Speak-up can lead to being put down or even a subpoena?
Hooray for moving towards a balance. Ignorance and greed create human made misery!
Trudeau is a low-IQ child, there are no adults in the PMO which makes the country vulnerable to ambitious bureaucrats, academics, and journalists. The state will continue to expand and intrude in everyone’s life.
Time for a popular uprising.
How do you do that without guns?
At the ballot box every election cycle. Make sure your kids vote when they grow up, and make sure their minds don’t get kidnapped by marxist/leftist progressive philosophy.
Is there any evidence that Green policies had any impact on this election?
Green policies normally come bottom of any poll about what people care about.
It’s always about the economy
Unless a foreign power has just used a WMD on your territory.
😎
I suspect “green policies” are just a symptom of the political philosophy more and more people are getting fed up with.
I think this has been said quite often, but it’s worth repeating. When something fails, and fail repeatedly, to deliver, it gets dumped – or word to that effect.
I think that we had a near miss with Trump being elected instead of his opposition, which could have driven us all into bankruptcy in a heartbeat. I don’t know what’s coming down the road, aside from Spring and the robins inspecting the tree outside my window for a nesting site. If this was an indicator that the shift is toward a more sensible attitude, that’s good news.
Every cycle has a life span, and fortunately, this crazypants stuff seems to be reaching the end of its span. I hope so. I hope that smarter heads prevail from now on, and that common sense will take up the slack where it was dumped.
I don’t think anyone wants to find himself living in the dystopic world of Mad Max.
Hello Sara,
Perhaps due to my cynicism, I don’t hold quite as hopeful a viewpoint as you. I had a professor of economics in college who observed (paraphrasing), “Isn’t it interesting that every major national or international event shifts the moral compass of people everywhere?” What she meant is that the “new norm” is slowly rolling down the incline, like warm molasses, to something more senseless and depraved. I tend to agree with her assessment based solely on my experience and observation– and climate change is shining example of something that was a golden branch of science depraved by the “ruling idiocy”, whose esteemed members include the likes Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, and all citizens blind enough to follow. Sure, here in America, we may have elected someone a few steps in the more sensible direction than Obama, Clinton, and Bush, but Trump’s Andrew Jackson style fire will only be a brief four or eight-year reprieve before the depravity of sensibility continues its journey downward into self-destruction.
And clearly it’s far worse elsewhere around the world, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Germany being some of the worst places. The elections in SA are just another story in a novel still being written, so to speak.
Oh, I understand your take completely, Leowaj, but the reality of dystopia is that it fails completely (Pol Pot-Cambodia, 1970s, North Korea since 1940s under the Kims) and while dictators may rule for a while, they all end up dead.
Stalin, in fact, had given orders that he was not to be disturbed and his bedroom NOT entered, period, until he emerged from it. on pain of death. As a result, when he suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage and died, it was because no one would go into his room, period, until some brave soul finally took the chance. After that, things started oozing slowly away from communism.
When Hong Kong was returned to mainland Chinese government by the British Crown in 1999, the eyes of the Chinese government were finally opened. They may still be strict, but they don’t give a crap about Greenbean this and that. Idealism is great, isn’t it? But idealism and inclusiveness won’t pay the bills and put food on the table, or keep clothes on your back.
Please do try to find something positive. Trump is the door that is slowly opening in this country to end the silly nonsense that has been going on.
I wouldn’t call the election results “obliterated” by any stretch of the imagination … the new government’s 38% primary vote is worrisome, downright disgraceful, given they were fighting Australia’s very own Gerry ‘Moonbeam’ Brown, in Jay Weatherill.
Weatherill should now be called to account for the wilful destruction public property in demolishing power station assets.
The new Premier’s first announcement after being sworn in has not encouraged any expectation that he will reject his predecessor’s obsession with unreliable energy. He still imagines that batteries can usefully contribute to a grid. And of course we have the imminent threat from the Turnbull fantasy that pumped hydro can cost-effectively transform unreliable energy into reliable energy. Pumped hydro has a role, which is increasing the effectiveness of reliable energy as in the Wivenhoe Dam -Splitter’s Creek Dam arrangement.
The new Australian Conservatives party could have done ok in the SA election.
I predicted they wouldn’t because they abandoned real policies:
– New coal power-station (guaranteed for operation in 2019) .
– Nuclear wast storage industry.
– Non Gov anti-corruption website with full public access.
Cory Bernardi (their leader) had great promise but he’s now spineless.
Forget the Australian Conservatives they’re another breed of swamp creature in the making.
They’ll be gone inside 5-years (remember this).
AGW legislation has a lot of six-figure-plus supporters.
The new SA government is just as looney re renewables as the outgoing. They believe the answer is more storage and a new interconnector to NSW so they can balance their wildly swinging grid. Of course they want the Feds to at for it. They want to borrow $100 million and give means tested grants to households which install batteries.
Of course the “”cheaper electricity prices” doesn’t factor in the $100 million. The state has the highest electricity prices in the industrialised world, the highest unemployment in Australua, massive drug problems and industry is living the state. But there is a total refusal to consider that the massive change from coal to renewables has caused the problem.
It’s time to bring in the climate psychology experts to explain the voter illness. It may have a lot to do with rooftop solar injecting enough selfish interests into the original political policy design and its eventual unwinding. Perhaps California and some other developed solar rooftop (selfish) markets are next.
People are conditioned to believe that the end of slavery was a political success. It was not. It was a mining and engineering one as low energy costs made slaves no longer an economic necessity. Ultimately high energy costs will result in the return of slavery in reality if not in name.
History teaches us very little as it is written by those at the top of the social and academic tree.