On current energy policy

David Edmunds writes: Re.”Nationalisation back on the agenda in politicians’ power panic” (Tuesday)

It is common place for commentators to say, as Bernard Keane did yesterday, that: “Successive federal and state governments of all varieties have badly botched the electricity market.”

I don’t see where Labor has botched the market.  The “carbon tax” was considered to be the best available policy to provide investment certainty.  Labor has maintained its belief that a price on carbon is the best way to ensure investment certainty and address climate change in this industry.  Labor has also made it clear that it is prepared to work with the coalition on a bipartisan energy policy.

We always knew that there was a learning curve in working out how to mesh wind and solar into the existing grid.  The South Australia blackout report provided some of the answers, as did the SA government response.  Part of that answer related to the number of times, and the technique whereby it happened, that a generating source should attempt to reconnect when the power lines blew over.  Perhaps we should all have known that, but it seems more likely that this is one of those arcane administrative rules that is informed by experience.  There has been a rush of rule changes since last summer that look to address this vast change in technology, led by the regulators and the Labor SA and VIC governments.

In this sort of debate no one, with hindsight, has made perfect decisions, but there is a vast gulf between the informed policy and administration work we have seen from Labor, and the ridiculous, incompetent, childish and petulant response from the coalition. “Blackout Bill” is not an energy policy.

John Richardson writes: Re.”Nationalisation back on the agenda in politicians’ power panic” (Tuesday)

So, Bernard Keane reckons that AGL is “a company being placed under pressure — the pressure of co-ordinated attacks from ministers & ex-ministers; the pressure of prime ministerial bullying, the pressure of News Corp outlets waging war on the company, complete with suggestions of some form of inappropriate conduct by its CEO – to allow the government to dictate what the company does with its assets & its cash”.

Sounds like a classic case of the wicked socialist pot calling the capitalist running dog kettle black.