Labor engaging in green energy 'Orwellian doublethink'

Nick Cater I May 18, 2024 I SkyNews.com.au I 3 min read

The government's official line is that renewable energy is cheap.

So cheap, in fact, that the Treasurer is giving households a $300 subsidy so they can afford it.?

Chris Bowen boasts that the amount of cheap wind and solar energy has increased by 25 per cent during his term as energy minister.

Yet electricity bills have risen by 18 per cent on average, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

One of George Orwell’s enduring contributions to the English language was the word doublethink.

It describes the art of holding two contradictory facts in one’s head while maintaining that both are true.

In Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, doublethink is essential for survival in a world where the government aspires to control everything.

It requires us to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, to deny the existence of objective reality while taking account of the truth that one denies.

The government's promise to reduce household electricity bills by $275 a year proved as reliable as the Ministry of Plenty's solemn pledge not to reduce the chocolate ration in 1984.

Doublethink excuses the powers that be from having to admit they were wrong.

They simply exchange one piece of nonsense for another.

The Ministry of Love’s task in Orwell’s dystopia was to torture dissidents.

The Ministry of Peace was responsible for conducting wars.

The Ministry of Plenty's task was to manage abundance but scarcity.

The job of the Energy Minister is not to manage the supply of energy but to devise convoluted ways to compensate for its shortage.

If renewable energy is as cheap as the government claims, Bowen would surely risk being trampled underfoot by the influx of investors.

Yet investment in renewable energy is at its lowest level for eight years.

Last week, Bowen joined his Victorian and Tasmanian counterparts for a back-slapping session.

Both states have signed up to Bowen's Capacity Investment Scheme, a sweetheart deal for renewable energy companies designed to break the drought in investment.?

Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio was delighted.

The Victorian Government has pledged to reach net zero by 2045, five years ahead of the rest of the world, but has no idea how to achieve it.

“It’s great to have the Commonwealth Government on board to help us build even more renewable energy projects and deliver cheap and reliable power,” she said.

D’Ambrosio’s claim that more renewable energy will make electricity cheaper blatantly contradicts the available facts.

Her doublespeak skills were apprenticed at the feet of a master, and while Dan Andrews is now retired from politics, his legacy of dissembling lives on.

Andrews changed the constitution to ban exploration for gas and then complained long and loudly that Queensland was selling gas for export instead of pumping it his way like other leaders who make claims excessive claims for the effectiveness of government, Andrews said that he could never admit to changing policy.

The failure of government plans must be blamed on an enemy, just as Anthony Albanese blames Vladimir Putin for the failure of his energy policy.

Yet the consequences of government incompetence will eventually grow to big to be contained in doublethink massaged by the Ministry of Truth.

The Albanese administration crossed that point in Tuesday’s Budget.

Having failed to deliver cheap energy, the government has been forced to resort to cheap politics.

Money that could have been given in tax cuts or paying down public debt will instead be spent to disguise the truth that energy has become more expensive under a government that came to power promising the very opposite.

Rather than expressing their disappointment and embarking on plan B, the government is doubling down, promising to spend more of our money on an expanded list of subsidies.

Bowen now insists he has the answer with Reliable Renewables Plan, which, as its name suggests, is inherently fraudulent.

The only reliable feature of wind and solar is its unreliability.

The Ministry of Plenty's rousing claim about an astronomical rise in the production of boots was undone by its failure to meet its target for shoelaces.

The failure of the government's energy policy boils down to a similar problem of matching supply and demand; balancing a grid saturated with intermittent energy is an impossible task for any government, let alone a government as ham-fisted as this.

Nick Cater is a senior fellow at Menzies Research Centre