If you have read any of my other blog posts it may come as a surprise that I was a Greens supporter up until fairly recently…. 2020 in fact.
During my master’s studies I became more aware of importance of economic growth and Australia need of mining activity to achieve that. Australia has nothing else to fill this substantial hole. Any assertions that Green Energy could replace coal and gas mining in revenue or energy production is deliberately misleading. Australia is not a renewables player, we are a customer, and a naive one at that.
It’s a safe assertion that The Greens do not appeal to pragmatic voters. Many of their supporters are capable of comprehending the challenges but chose to ignore them in favour of idealism. The stereotypical Greens supporter is educated, but typically not in a fiscal or political sense. The Greens appeal to passionate, well-educated, comfortable city dwellers. I have been all these. The Greens under Adam Bandt’s leadership have made a dramatic turn away from defending traditional environmental issues towards urban radical leftism . Unlike the ALP, going further left was not actually necessary. We now have a situation where the ALP are forced to match the Greens on some radical positions to defend their inner-city seats. What irks me most of all is that the Greens are purported to be socialist. Yet the Greens regurgitate messaging from ultra-wealthy elites. And if that wasn’t enough, their policies make life a lot harder for the less fortunate. Almost all western democracies have a shrinking middle class. You may hear people talk about ‘increasing wealth gaps’ but this an oversimplistic way of looking at the situation. I have written about this previously, link at the bottom. Semantics aside, it’s time someone addressed the root cause before too many people become disgruntled. The ultra wealthy are acutely aware there is growing resentment in the middle class. They have purchased news outlets, started think tanks, taken over social media companies, built secure compounds on islands and built super yachts that can cruise indefinitely far away from trouble.
But it’s their misinformation they very deliberately engineer that turns us against each other that I believe is truly evil. What I fear most today is a socialist revolution. A revolution where our system of living built over a thousand years, that lifted us out of poverty, is torn to shreds because of the immoral behaviour of a few thousand powerful people. Maybe they don’t want this either, but they are at least expecting it and have more resources to act.
As a person who still cares deeply about habitat, water and air quality, a review of the ‘Polices, Principles and Aims’ of the Greens on their website, I see numerous policy disasters.
The Greens intend to push what they call sustainable agriculture. In effect this means more regulations than we currently have. Farmers and Builders are already paralysed from bureaucratic process. Case in hand, we do not operate our farm commercially because the regulations make it unviable. Agriculture operations need to be of significant size so they can absorb the costs of regulations and excises. In an area where the farming land incurs similar council rates per square metre as encroaching suburban developments few properties are active. Of the few that still run crops or cattle do so only to offset tax from other income sources. Currently Australian farmers are less competitive and somewhat of a bugbear to the two major retailers. It’s not like imported food from Asia will see lower prices in the supermarket, just greater profits for Coles and Woolworths.
The Greens animal welfare agenda will see an end to a number of farming practices in Australia which will have a significant impact of food availability in Australia and South East Asia. Just as beef became affordable to many households for the first time in many Asian counties one of the largest producers of affordable protein will be shut down because of misguided idealistic rubbish. Beef production in Australia feeds much of south east Asia. Australian beef allows many people an opportunity to access a source of high protein that was not previously available. Regardless of what vegans will tell you, legumes or vegetables do not contain significant protein. Looking at their policies its clear the Greens would like to see meat production ended in Australia and intend to do this via red tape.
The Greens would like to spend more taxpayer funds on the high arts. Most households want to choose their own events to visit. The Greens and Labor want to leave that up to government bureaucrats to do this with your tax dollars. I have attended a few of these events (typically under Labor) such as the Asia Pacific Triennial, a multimillion dollar arts festival, invite only, all expenses spared. The Greens want to put further regulation on corporate, banking and finance, so expect higher prices and fees. I’ll save you the hundred thousand dollar business degree, this strategy is against business theory. More government regulation never brings down costs. Competition forces efficiency and lower costs, not additional process.
First Nations and further Gender Equality. Australia already has tight discrimination laws that ensure all Australians are treated fairly. What the Greens are actually pushing for is ‘equality of outcome’. Meaning: anything that is earned, could be taken and given to someone else. It’s a complete reversal of the foundation of our society.
Refugees. The Greens intend to increase the intake of refugees by giving prospective refugees additional rights to stay, no matter why they might, or what they have to offer Australians. Under the guise of moral fairness, Non-Australians rights will override Australian rights. If you believe Australia has a housing shortage and high costs of living how could this be a sensible strategy?
Climate. The Greens are as you would expect huge supporters of climate alarmism. The Greens in their immortal fight with Australian Farmers have concocted a pincer attack strategy with death-by-red tape and prioritised land use for solar and wind farms over food production. It’s no coincidence they chose to use the word ‘farms’. It’s less alarming that way. The Australian Greens are not unique. Many environmental parties around the world receive their finical support from institutions funded by the people who have a financial interest in renewable energy. It’s a trillion-dollar industry.
I invite you to invest 30 minutes scrutinising the very individuals who push this agenda. They are assuming you won’t because very few do. And it’s not like they even have to invest their own money in these industries. Renewables are vastly funded from government subsidies, in fact the electric vehicle market is completely subsidised with the sale price of EVs being almost insignificant. In effect non-EV driving taxpayers are paying for overpriced Telsas and Elon Musk’s jet.
It’s quite pathetic that more people are not outraged. The most vocal climate change narcissists feature regularly in the top ten of celebrity jet tracker. You can’t holiday on a luxury yacht with 30,000l fuel tanks and preach about the climate.
The time has long past when green energy advocates could deflect the rising costs of electricity bills. The upgrades required to support a new green architecture with it’s millions of solar and wind arrays all feeding into the national electricity grid is a massive architectural redesign. The Australian public has to pay for this massive undertaking either directly on bills or via government subsidies. National electricity grids were built up over a hundred years. We need to remember that even after this, our energy wholesalers will still need to maintain these complex networks, regardless of the amount of power or what direction it flows. Even when we’ve gone full green, they will have to extract from households and business the money to maintain them. Unless you expect everyone will be offgrid. But that’s not possible, I’ll explain this in another post.
Let’s look at a two post Greens win scenarios:
The cost of diesel goes up with an increase in tax to deter people from using it. Vegetable farmers now have a baseline increase in costs. Everything on a farm uses diesel, it’s safe to handle with its low flame point and stability, it’s easy to store and cheap. It’s worth mentioning some business expenses are deductable, but anyone who has run a business will understand there are unavoidable costs that get be passed on. Outcome: cost of your food rises.
You need a new car. You purchase an EV because it’s now mandated and the prior subsides have been removed. The true cost of the EV is now much higher than your previous internal combustion car. Now you need to install a charging station in your garage or carpark at work. No problem if you own the premises and there are no physical barriers. However, your EV charger needs a uniquely high capacity feed. But you bite the bullet and install one. The cable is expensive and part of a wall and the concrete need to be dug up to run it. Now you need to inform your insurance company and electricity retailer. Both the power bills and premiums will rise, you need to be prepared for that. EVs draw far more power than any home appliance. So you decided to charge from your solar array. Solar arrays can only charge your car if you have approximately double the battery and solar array capacity than your hose needs alone. Otherwise, you will draw from the grid and get those big power bills again. Even with our favourable setup it did not make economic sense for me.
The Greens will make EVs mandatory, they support the same European environmental goals as Labor. With NetZero there isn't another option. You will pay more for your cars and their more frequent replacement. Whether or not they are cheaper to run day to day is uncertain. Currently even with subsidies they are more expensive in a ‘total cost of ownership’. EVs have their place. We own a hybrid and it’s quietness is appreciated. For shorty trips its fuel usage is minimal. We almost forget to put fuel in it. On longer trips and highways its advantage is lost.
Stagnation and Inaction. What I fear most with the 2025 Australian Federal election is a coalition between the ALP and the Greens. This would result in a more bloated slow-moving government and with longer fingers. Red tape is only good for those who can avoid it. Red tape stifles nimble competition.
At best the Greens will win enough seats to force the ALP into a power sharing arrangement that will cause a complete impasse of policy. The ALP are aware that ending fossil fuel use and mining is simply impossible. If Australia had educated in the 90s to build a modern services-based economy instead of squandering the opportunity as the Howard Government did, maybe we could consider a Greens agenda. Today as things are I cannot consider so much as a partial Greens government with growing Chinese aggression. Passive aggressiveness doesn’t work on bullies. It’s important to remind ourselves that Australia is highly dependent on trade, specifically shipping. We have this odd situation in Australia where we have the appearance of being a modern western country while only really having primary, some secondary and some tertiary industries to speak of.
Currently Australia only has 60 days of fuel in reserves. Although we have one remaining refinery (and possibly another dormant) restarting a petrol refinery is a long and involved process. If we ever needed to restart our oil refineries, the presumption is we had our supply routes blocked. The refineries are along the coast and trivial pickings for warships. Eitherway, the Greens would not support fossil fuel processing no matter how urgent.
Truth is, Australia can’t afford to play big boy games. Europe and America have had time to build up the wealth and bureaucracy to play them. Australia is not an independent or significant power. This is why we can expect a resurgence in support for the far-right parties as has happened in more mature societies. Years of unrestrained progressive policies have driven rational people to desperate measures.
Who is to blame. Voters are. If you intend to select a party based on specific issues, you owe it to yourself to thoroughly and completely understand those issues. This does not mean reading pamphlets, watching YouTube videos or reading online news articles. All mediums are biased and some deliberately misleading. High production value content was funded by some interested party. When political parties take power, they change the messaging however they can. You need to stop thinking your favoured news source is unbiased. If you believe bureaucracy has a cost, and that costs are passed on to the consumer you need to think twice about voting Greens. Ask yourself the following:
As for simply taxing the rich: You can’t tax people who can afford apartments in Switzerland.
Links:
Petrol in Australia
EV or not EV
Death of the Middleclass
Greens Policies
Celebrity Jet Tracker