Pray for sensible socialists & compassionate capitalists, son

Stephen Fyson 29 November 2023 The Spectator

There it was again, in a report about what Minister Bowen is planning next – that dreaded phrase …?‘dramatic market intervention’.

This government can’t help themselves. They give us a promise. They can’t keep it. They try to convince us otherwise. But when all that fails, government intervention (that costs us both money and freedom) comes roaring into play to ‘fix it’.

I think back to what my dad taught me. He was a man of few words (unlike his son), and a true gentleman: ‘Pray for sensible socialists and compassionate capitalists, son.’ Leaving some of the capitalists aside for the moment (and much could be said about how many of them need to get back to their core business of stewardship instead of being locked into harmful profiteering), we can note that our current political leaders are reinforcing their non-sensible socialist credentials.

The article and commentary by Geoff Chambers in the?Australian?(23/11/2023) explains the context well. He reports that Minister Bowen’s rescue package for the government’s renewable targets will require a five-fold increase in government-backed intervention. Five-fold! Why is this so urgent? Chambers described two reasons. The first is for the politics of wanting the next GOP conference here in Australia. And the other, more pragmatic reason, is that the targets the government set during the election campaign are simply not possible under current conditions.

In other words, Bowen & Co got it wrong but they do not want to examine their basic assumptions behind their harmful targets, and so they will simply do more of the same – even though what they are doing is hurting those who are least able to handle the pain.

What do I mean by ‘basic assumptions’? Here is a short list of home truths the government should check out and compare against their current beliefs about the need for energy transition at their preferred rate of change:

·??????? The changes in the climate are not reason for alarm.

·??????? Our best response to any change is what humans have done for millennia – adapt.

·??????? The climate computer modelling is so poor that no one can do long-term planning based on the modelling.

·??????? The science behind the computer modelling is so poor no one can sensibly claim that human contributions to climate change are causing local events.

·??????? The building of ‘clean energy’ technology feeds more of the claimed ‘damaging matter’ into the environment than what we do now (in the context of China adding to its world-leading emitting).

·??????? The green economic activity that takes place in China makes them stronger – and yet they are the nation that is our greatest regional threat.

·??????? The way to be transparent in these processes is to (a) release the specific ‘science’ on which the government is making their decisions; and (b) release how government costings compare between energy sources, which includes all subsidies in products and activities essential to their energy transition.

The government has been consistent, even resilient, in hiding the science and full economic reality of their energy transition. And again, according to Geoff Chambers, ‘the cost to taxpayers [is] being kept secret under commercial-in-confidence provisions’ as they prepare their five-fold increase of interference.

The reason for this pain is ideological. The government wants an alternative energy source without accepting any compromises with current or alternative sources. We, the ones paying the bills while closely watching our budgets, are the ones who are carrying the negative consequences for both the incompetence of thought and incompetence of action during this transition.

We know the government leaders are not thinking clearly because they will not engage in a mature way with the basic statements above. We know that they are not acting well because of the rising cost of energy which is driving so much of the inflation with which we are struggling.

What are we left with? A government that is driven by alarmism. There is no reason for climate?alarm?– whatever is happening, we can adapt to it in a way that is far better than trying to dismantle a good system and replace it with fantastical plans at astronomical costs.

We live by the ‘vibe’ – when it feels good, it must be done. Those in control work according to their feel-good plans (‘we are saving the planet’), by forcing their ideologies on us. Yet we carry the cost, not them.

These ideologues need to go and work in a factory, or in a shop, or on a farm for a while. Perhaps this may help them be more sensible, as my father hoped for – and he was someone who lived through the Depression, was part of the ADF in the second world war, and who worked his way from the factory floor to being an ethical tax accountant. But without some transformational insight, these socialists will continue to invite us into their dream, and when we do not enter in, they will then impose membership into their dream onto us. When we are thus forced to join in, we will discover there is no dream – we will be walking into a dismantling of much that is good in our world, and that will turn out to be a nightmare.

AUTHOR Stephen Fyson