Power should be cheap
LAST night’s breakthrough on Adani is welcome news, but it still feels like just the latest cliffhanger episode in a high- stakes political soap opera.
The agreement on royalties is unarguably a massive step forward in this saga.
This was a genuine stumbling block and, had discussions gone awry, could potentially have killed off the project and with it thousands of jobs for North Queensland.
Technically, all that remains to get the project under way is for the Adani board to convene and, hopefully, give it the thumbs up.
That is likely to be within weeks, given the company is confident it will receive approval for a Northern Australia Investment Facility loan to construct the connecting rail line. That’s the good news. Glencore’s threat to wind up its copper operations in North Queensland presents a new clear and present danger to our economic prospects. The company employs 200 workers at its Townsville smelter and 2000 in total across the region. Its withdrawal would be catastrophic, particularly in light of QNI’s collapse 16 months ago.
If Glencore goes, so does a massive chunk of Townsville’s manufacturing base. It would leave only Sun Metals’ zinc refinery as the one remaining major smelter here.
Glencore’s challenges are myriad but the chief one is of the Palaszczuk Government’s making: the price of energy.
Because the Government is demanding its power providers pay it higher dividends, they in turn are funding those demands by raising power prices. For energy- hungry businesses such as Glencore, this has an amplified effect. Its power prices are a huge component of its cost inputs. And they are far higher than those paid by Glencore’s international competitors.
Ordinary retail consumers are partially shielded from this government gouge by the northern subsidy.
That is politically astute but ultimately economically and strategically dumb.
Businesses employ people. When they suffer, they have less ability to employ.
This is a massive wake- up call to Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Government. Fix the power price rip- off or prepare for an economic disaster. IT IS disappointing to see a writer in this newspaper joining the antiAdani forces.
While everyone is entitled to their view, some of the comments don’t represent the facts.
Like most, I want to see the preservation of the planet’s assets including our reef and unique wildlife – but there is a transition time to move to a full or near full renewable energy supply and its not short term as naively implied. It will probably be at least the halflife of a new power station and most likely longer, something in the order of 40 years.
Meanwhile we languish with a dwindling energy source as the battle over the good or the bad of coal rages and the need for Adani and its immediate benefits to Townsville are blocked by the ideological views of inner capital city tree- huggers.
The left- leaning Climate Council of Australia acknowledges that our greenhouse emissions “are less than 2 per cent” ( 1.4 per cent in fact) yet they fiddle formulas citing at 0.3 per cent of emissions per capita “we are one of the highest in the world” making out that our tiny 1.4 per cent in total emissions is going to precipitate a worldwide climate Armageddon and to a man all Australians will be to blame.
The whole matter of future electricity supply can have sinister unintended consequences. Sun Metals are being visionary in that they forecast further crippling power costs and possible shortages. Be sure they are trying to drought- proof their massive investment, not play planet warriors.
Flip forward a few pages in the same edition and you see the man- ager of a major North Queensland aquaculture business citing crippling power costs threatening their viability. It is affecting business of all sizes down to the humble corner store, let alone households. I’m sure the new battery factory mentioned will also have its start- up hinged on the reliability of power from the grid.
Queensland in particular should be in the box seat. The state still owns its electricity assets. They should be providing electricity at a smidgen of the cost it is currently to both householders and industry.
To put it in simple terms. If you owned a milk bar and had a cow in the backyard you should have the cheapest milkshakes in town. The state owns the power stations and has untold coal and gas resources in its backyard. You work it out. We should be an industrial heartland. GRAHAM WHEELER,
Gulliver.