Energy Minister Angus Taylor (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)

Evidently alarmed by the growing focus on the government’s proposed “CoalKeeper” tax on households to prop up unviable fossil fuel generators, Angus Taylor and his media and industry backers have rushed to defend directing billions in subsidies to fossil fuel companies.

Taylor got himself asked a Dixer in question time yesterday and used it to insist CoalKeeper would be about “gas and pumped hydro”, and that other countries had similar mechanisms. Energy Security Board head Kerry Schott — who oversaw the $1 million sale of NSW’s coal-fired Vales Point power station to Trevor St Baker’s Delta Energy — claimed CoalKeeper wouldn’t prolong the lives of coal-fired power stations for a minute.

And the Financial Review editorialised that CoalKeeper wasn’t about protecting coal, but “if it is designed well, should not protect coal generation from the immense pressure it is under to exit” — though at least it acknowledged the obvious, that “the plan could cost more”.

The Fin also ran an op-ed by former Minerals Council executive and News Corp journalist Matthew Warren, who now heads the industry lobby group for most of the major fossil fuel generators, the Australian Energy Council. Warren argued “the devil remains in the detail, in particular how the anchoring coal-fired generators would be treated under a such a reform”.

The argument from CoalKeeper advocates boils down to “trust the government not to use this to prop up coal”.

The problem is we know the government can’t be trusted. As Crikey explained yesterday, fossil fuel representatives have a stranglehold on the policy process within the government and to the government via external inputs, as well as being some of the biggest donors to the Coalition.

We know that one of the biggest topics of Scott Morrison’s regular lies and falsehoods is climate and energy policy. We know that the National Party is committed to expanding coal-fired power with taxpayer funding. We know that the government is committed to a taxpayer-funded “gas-led recovery”. We know that the government remains wedded to hopelessly inadequate 2030 emissions reduction targets. And we even know that forged documents are used by Angus Taylor’s office.

Knowing all that, who could credibly suggest the government can be trusted to observe a technology-agnostic policy process in developing a so-called reliability obligation? Every decision the government has made on energy — from backing gas, to changing its Emissions Reduction Fund, to handing out money for scoping studies for coal-fired power stations — has been designed to serve the interests of the fossil fuel industry.

Now we’re being asked to believe that CoalKeeper, and the possibility of each household paying $400 a year to support greenhouse emissions, will be different.