AUSTRALIA SHOULD DITCH THE PARIS ACCORD

THE Prime Minister’s revamped energy policy, while it is a step in the right direction, is still fatally flawed.

The big flaw is the commitment to the Paris Accord. The question must be asked, why? The Australian people did not give consent to the signing of the accord. Any Australian government’s first commitment should be to its own people and the national interest.

Mr Turnbull should put the national interest first and follow President Trump and ditch the Paris Accord. There is no gain to the nation by going ahead with any emissions reduction target.

It will place a severe strain on the economy and will perpetuate expensive green power — and widespread power outages.

And the real kicker is that Australia’s Paris commitment will make no difference to the climate — period.

When are governments going to understand the word “despatchable”? You can’t run a modern economy on renewable energy. The simple fact is that you need baseload power and for Australia that means coal and gas.

There are no plans by any government to take over existing fossil fuel power stations or to build new ones. Until this is done then we had better get used to rolling blackouts.

Why are we continuing in this folly to undermine our own economy? Trying to have your cake and eat it too isn’t going to work. Coalfired power has given us 60 years of stable, efficient and reliable power.

We have mountains of coal and gas yet we want to turn our backs on coal and tilt at windmills.

A royal commission should be immediately called to test the veracity of claims that man’s emissions are negatively impacting the climate. Alan Barron, Grovedale