Dear Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,

Right now, Australia has found itself in an energy crisis (not a climate crisis), and ADVANCE has been warning about it for bloody years.

On Monday, gas spot prices rose to an incredible $382/gigajoule, a far cry from the traditional price for gas of around $3/gigajoule.

The shadow price for gas (that would apply if the price cap was not in place) spiked to $800/gigajoule yesterday – a 26,500 per cent increase on the traditional price or an 8000 per cent increase on the $10/gigajoule price manufactures have been paying over the last few years.

Meanwhile wholesale energy prices are at around $400-600 per megawatt hour – well over double what prices were around a year ago.

Australia’s largest coal-fired power plant at Eraring says it can’t get enough coal, billionaire green activist Mike Cannon-Brookes destroyed AGL’s ability to keep their coal-fired power plants open until 2045, and it gets even worse when it comes to petrol prices at the bowser.

The short point?

Australia’s largely Labor-run state governments have DESTROYED our energy sector, and it’s been a damn long time coming.

They privatised our coal-fired power plants on the cheap.

They committed to emissions reduction targets, foreshadowing the inevitable closure of our coal-fired power plants on so-called environmental grounds.

They have refused to open new gas fields and implement gas reservation schemes to ensure all our gas isn’t sent overseas to the detriment of our domestic manufacturers.

They have refused to legalise nuclear energy.

They have polluted the grid with unstable, taxpayer-subsidised wind turbines and solar panels that make coal-fired power plants terribly unprofitable and expensive.

Now they’re set to force taxpayers to shell out even more for the expensive transmission infrastructure to make their green pie-in-the-sky pipedreams come to fruition.

The solution to the mess?

1. Given our energy companies are too gutless to stand up to their green activist shareholders, Labor should NATIONALISE our coal-fired power plants and implement Premier Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen’s Reserve Resource Policy. In that, one per cent of the nation’s thermal coal mining output is given to the state-owned coal-fired power plants for free. When Petersen took the state of Queensland down this path, Australia had the CHEAPEST energy in the world and manufacturers from all corners of the globe came here to set up shop. Now they’re all leaving…
2. Labor should TAKE back the energy retailers owned by the Chinese Communist Party. As Bob Katter has been saying for months, “40 per cent of the electricity industry in Australia is owned by China.” We can’t bloody trust ‘em!
3. Labor should LEGALISE nuclear energy – it would only take the flick of a pen! According to the Minerals Council, the “nuclear ban can be reversed with a single amendment to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Commonwealth). The removal of four words – ‘a nuclear power plant’ – in Section 140A(1)(b) would allow nuclear industries to be considered for development in Australia.”
4. Labor should implement gas reservation schemes on the east coast to ensure all our gas doesn’t get sent overseas, depriving our manufacturers and households of the critical fuel. Without such a scheme and the signing of such long-term gas offtake agreements, Australians are often paying MORE for Aussie gas than the Chinese and Koreans!
5. Labor should LEGALISE oil exploration in the Great Australian Bight and Arckaringa Basin. This should be paired with the construction of several state-owned fuel refineries to ensure we can refine our own crude oil. Believe it or not, at the moment Australia produces crude oil, sends it to Korea for refining, and then reimports it at a premium price because we don’t have enough onshore oil refining capacity. Bonkers!
6. Labor should FAST TRACK the development of the Beetaloo Basin gas fields in the Northern Territory. Even the ABC admits there’s enough shale gas in Beetaloo to power Australia for 300 years!
7. Labour should BAN ALL subsidies to renewables and take away their feed-in priority status to facilitate grid stability. For those who don’t understand, the power produced by “renewables” (when the weather permits, mind you) gets priority into the grid, meaning coal and gas fired power stations have to scale down to ensure the grid doesn’t become overloaded at their own cost. When the renewables stop producing power when the wind stops blowing, the coal and gas plants have to scale back up again at their own cost. This is a hidden subsidy for renewables that also makes coal and gas unprofitable.
8. Labor should ABANDON ALL emissions reduction targets. Instead, we should tie our emissions reduction targets to the emissions reductions of the Chinese Communist Party to ensure we aren’t handicapping ourselves when it comes to our industrial competitiveness in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment.

With these 8 steps, you can easily guarantee cheap, reliable energy for Australians.

Very best,

The ADVANCE team.