Essay by Eric Worrall
Three state branches of Australia’s main opposition party have voted to dump Net Zero.
Queensland Liberals vote to ditch net zero
Andrew Tillett Foreign affairs, defence correspondent
Aug 22, 2025 – 3.48pm…
The convention passed a motion calling for a “flexible” approach to emissions reduction and for the federal party to abandon the commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, a policy adopted under Scott Morrison’s prime ministership.
The motion is not binding on the federal party room but follows similar resolutions passed by the West Australian and South Australian branches, putting pressure on Ley amid a sweeping review into the Coalition’s policies.
Home affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie and former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce are the highest profile members to call for the net zero pledge to be axed, while conservative activist group Advance is lobbying MPs to dump the policy.
…
Read more: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/queensland-libs-vote-to-ditch-net-zero-despite-ley-plea-to-modernise-20250822-p5mp1e
This political shift is encouraging, though it is sad the federal leader of the Liberals is still clinging to the failed politics of yesterday.
Something needs to change. Mining and heavy industry in Australia is in big trouble, thanks to skyrocketing prices.
BlueScope warns soaring energy costs threaten Australian manufacturing as profit drops 90pc
By Kelly Fuller
ABC Illawarra
Topic:Steel
Mon 18 AugIn short:
BlueScope reports a 90 per cent fall in full-year profit amid soaring energy costs and volatile trade policies.
CEO Mark Vassella says urgent reforms are needed to secure Australia’s manufacturing future.
What’s next?
It has argued its case for reform in a submission to the federal government’s Gas Market Review.
BlueScope has sounded the alarm over Australia’s energy crisis, warning that unsustainably high gas prices are pushing domestic manufacturing to a “tipping point”.
The steelmaker has reported a full year profit of $84 million, a 90 per cent drop from the $721 million reported a year ago.
Speaking after the company’s AGM, BlueScope CEO Mark Vassella said energy costs in Australia are now three to four times higher than in the US and risked undermining the country’s Future Made in Australia vision.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-18/bluescope-warns-energy-costs-threaten-made-in-australia/105666186
BlueScope goes on to argue for a bigger protected domestic market, to shield producers from international gas prices, but reducing the return on investment for energy producers probably isn’t the best solution to a price and availability crisis.
The reality is, Australia is not short of energy resources – we have some of the most abundant coal and gas fields in the world, not to mention our world class uranium and Thorium deposits. But all of our Uranium is exported, and domestic exploitation of fossil fuel resources has been systematically discouraged for decades, by politicians whose focus has been on issues other than economic development.
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In addition to the self-defeating energy policies that unrealistic Australian politicians and climate alarmists have been promoting for too long now, there has been growing realization among the more level-headed that until/unless there is some monumental technological breakthrough like exceptionally large scale battery storage, Net Zero is unattainable, plain and simple. So it’s time the green dreamers started facing reality and abandoned dead-end policies that just saddle consumers with higher living expenses and unreliable energy supplies.
Net zero is totally available without a technological breakthrough.
Nuclear Generation is 100% carbon free.
Nuclear Generation also uses less concrete than Wind Turbine Footings would for similar output GWh/80 year lifespan.
Less concrete in a 2.2GW nuclear facility that lasts 80 years than what would be used in 220 10MW Wind Turbines replaced every 20 years (880 units total)
“Nuclear Generation is 100% carbon free.”
It’s also 99% free of the ‘devil gas carbon dioxide’ … if you see CO2 as a problem !!
Plants and the planet itself certainly doesn’t see CO2 as an issue. The plants evolved to require CO2 to function properly. And we evolved to emit both CO2 and CH4 as products of respiration and digestion … to feed the CO2 based plant system. We are ALL carbon based life and CO2 is essential in our processes.
You can rest easy. There will be no battery breakthrough.
There has already been a breakthrough or two a year for the past two decades, and none ever has reached commercialization. The reason is chemistry.
Batteries are fundamentally limited by well-known chemistry. They cannot approach the capabilities of hydrocarbon fuels within a factor of 20 or worse – not to mention the vast mining required for the battery commodities and the FIRES, particularly do NOT mention the fires!
A breakthrough has to come from an entirely new direction, such as MAKING hydrocarbons.
We already know they work wonderfully.
The “CO2 is a pollutant” crowd believe they are all-knowing, i.e. Gods. Clearly, they could make hydrocarbon fuels – if they saw fit, but they refuse. It is a “Pollutant Derangement Syndrome” – PDS. “Green” H2, the current fad, will not succeed because of low production efficiency, low mass, low boiling temperature, etc. and not low, but negative profits.
Re lithium mining, the UK National Engineering Policy Centre issued a report on critical minerals in October 2024. They estimated that projected sales of EVs in the UK from 2018 to 2040 would require 268,000 tonnes of lithium. However if the battery size was reduced by 30% in the largest EVs this could save 46,000 tonnes of lithium. To mine that latter quantity of lithium would require excavating 75,000,000 tonnes of rock.
I saw a car with a “Say No to Net Zero” sticker yesterday
I saw one that had a silhouette of Bigfoot, with the caption “UNDEFEATED Hide and seek Champion”
I went looking for Bigfoot once but never saw squatch
I used to hike quite a bit, so I’ve often wondered if Bigfoot has grainy video of me.
Australia’s current net zero policy is demonstrably damaging and in need of extermination. No convincing argument can be raised to show benefits. At its roots is a particular political ideology that few Australian voters would support if they knew about it or cared about it. It is a prime example of a political. tactic aimed to assist re-election by the socialist party now governing.
Politics in Australia has changed. I have yet to hear of the Conservative opposition talking in public to voters about the history and principals that defined past strength of Conservativism. Now, major parties concentrate on giving voters “freebies” that are simply an admission that past taxation rates have been excessive.
I could write a long essay on what needs to be done, but few would read it and fewer understand it. Before social media times, people would seek status from others by study of history and being listened to. That quest for personal self-improvement is gone. Today, people instead spend time counting their likes for their social media comments. Learning has decreased. Geoff S
Geoff
I heard an interesting twist on the reason why the socialists are getting voted in, The old generation (meaning baby boomers) needs to step aside and let the younger generations choose their path.
In a recent interview, Tony Abbott reflected that view when he was asked about a second go at PM. He said it was a job for a younger person. Abbott was born in 1957 so 11 years younger than Trump.
I agree that the net zero policy is damaging. But Australia is a very rich country with lots of natural resources and a very high standard of living. So, people can and do vote for virtue-signalling policies even though these things injure them economically. The basic problem is that Australians have not yet suffered enough from doing “all the wrong things” with their energy choices.
When they have inflicted enough punishment upon themselves, they will stop. But only then. Logic and reason are irrelevant to a faith-based religion.
Australia is possibly where the US would
have been if Al Gore had been elected.
I think Al Gore would have destroyed US faster than what the various Australian governments have achieved.
US would be where Australia is if Clinton had won rather than Trump. And it appears Biden’s voter rigging has worked out well for US because Trump has come in with a clearer view of the socialist forces he faces.
The Hildebeeste never struck me as a climate change fanatic. Corrupt, and and always for rent to the highest bidder, but not a fanatic.
Hillary is probably the most corrupt politician in US history.
Let us stipulate—neither of us is suffering from suicidal ideation.
He certainly would have been more thorough than President Otto Penn was.
I think your analysis is exactly right, Rick.
Gore would have turned the U.S. into a third-world country real fast. He’s a zealot.
You’re possibly right that he would have turned us into a third world country but I have my doubts about his sincere zealotry.
I think he’s more of an incompetent nepo baby phony who some advisor taught to latch onto an up-and-coming trendy luxury belief in order to define his brand.
He was first selected to be the cardboard cut-out representing the Montreal Protocol, which ought to be called the DuPont Maneuver. (When your patents are running out on Freon, you hype a false threat of an ‘Ozone Hole’ to manipulate the world into requiring the use of your replacement inferior patented product). Then after that ran its course, his advisors told him to lend his wooden gravitas to the greatest hoax in all of human history.
But in the end didn’t he cash in by selling his phony baloney television network to the oil sheikhs for half a billion dollars?
Climate Zealot/Climate Hypocrite … AlGore either way
Yes, Al Gore made a lot of money on that television channel.
Isn’t it amazing how these politicians acquire such huge amounts of money in just a short time. It’s a racket for some of these politicians.
Any policy that increases sovereign risk for grid scale wind and solar developments is a good thing for Australia.
Only a fool would invest in the Australian electricity grid at the present time. And Blackout is the fool that is giving taxpayers money to eliminate investior risk for the private proponents.
The Australian grid is stuffed. The wholesa market is in decline. Industrial users are leaving the grid while rooftops are the only generating segment that is growing.
The rooftop sector is heading for a bumper year on trend for another 3.3GW of solar capacity.
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Any Australian owning a roof can hasten the demise of the grid by installing solar panels and batteries. And take advantage of OPM that the Federal and State governments pay you to join the transition to third world economy. Take your demand away from the big scammers and join the scam.
Sanity will prevail only after everyone can see why the RET (Renewable Energy Theft) was the beginning of the end for the existing grid.
I saw a key National Party figure promoting nuclear. Lets get back to promoting the lowest cost electricity using Victoria’s lignite.
It’s growing all over the world. People are starting to ask the right questions and it’s showing.
This does seem to be the case.
Since when did the western democracy leaders concern themselves with the majority of the people in making decisions on anything? There is abundant contrary evidence – War, energy, climate…
By definition, politicians think they know better than everybody else, & what everybody else should want … and they are almost always wrong.
After the US EPA rescind 2009 CO2 Endangerment Finding, whatever will
Premier Anthony A. and the Canberra Climate Commissars do? Will they eat humble pie, repent, and cancel the draconian climate agenda?
Interesting times are ahead.
Albosleezy and Blackout Bowen cannot rescind their policies as they would not then be able to move to a cushy UN position when they are (hopefully soon) kicked out
Let’s hope this is the start of reality coming back into fashion down under.
I also hope that return to reality is adopted here in the UK very soon, because at the present rate of economic destruction thanks to very high energy prices and the destroyed manufacturing industries leaving too many workers looking at destitution save for state handouts, which can’t continue much longer.
An example of how dire our energy policy in the UK is, can be seen today. It is Sunday a low energy demand day on the grid.
Of the pathetic 26GW of demand 40% of it is being met by imported electricity from France, Holland and Scandinavia. Our domestic wind turbine fleet, which has a capacity of over 30GW, is currently producing 0.65GW or barely 3% of demand.
The UK future is looking bleak, all thanks to our political class being fixated on Net Zero.
Something has got to change and soon.
“Our domestic wind turbine fleet, which has a capacity of over 30GW, is currently producing 0.65GW or barely 3% of demand.”
Giving a capacity factor of ~ 2% !!!
For comparison …
Average Capacity factors by (uncurtained) energy source
Nuclear, 85-90%
Geothermal, 73-77%
Combined cycle gas turbine, 65-71%
Coal, 55-65%
Biomass, 5 50-56%
Hydro, 35-45%
Wind, 2 30-45%
Solar PV, 8-22%
The population, dear boy. That’s what is changing.
Ouch. I get the headlines (with ‘snippets’) twice a day from the Sydney Morning Herald. From the Morning Edition, August 25, a one sentence quote:
The latest Resolve Political Monitor survey showed 44 per cent of voters supported the goal of reducing the nation’s carbon emissions by between 65 and 75 per cent by 2035 – a significant increase on the current target of a 43 per cent reduction by 2030.
Total surveyed: 1,800. The second paragraph gives a breakdown, for, against, undecided, by party affiliation. A ‘bunch’ of ‘undecided’.
Guys this is the beginning. Your leaders are not going to help you they are worthless power and control freaks. If states even counties started saying no, no more of this. We are going to put our constituents first. They deserve and we are obligated to make sure they have plentiful, affordable power and fuel. Just do it. If only one state did it and became prosperous the rest would follow, then eventually your leaders will follow.
Keep repeating the mantra… fickles are cheaper…fickles are cheaper…
International energy company admits overcharging some households in South Australia | Watch
Sounds like Engie wanted to dump particular customers or test getting out of the market altogether by giving them an offer they had to refuse. Note the usual suspects claiming South Australians are paying the highest power prices in the nation and the Minister admitting the NEM grid is broken. Well hello Minister just whose fault is that with your pet fickles?
The most fundamental goal of any legitimate government is to protect its citizens from the government. This was a founding principle driving the US Constitution.