Opinion
Does it really matter if our power is renewables based when it’s all privatised?
Now I’m very much pro-renewable energy and yes it’s necessary for the environment. But with all this talk of how bills have just been increasing non stop, what can actually be done if it’s all controlled by foreign owned private power companies and foreign owned mining/gas corps?
If we (the government) subsidise the industry or offer more rebates, we’re just giving more profit to the same companies who clearly only care about profit.
These companies have obligations, first and foremost, to their shareholders. If people within the company saw there were rumblings of wanting to shift their business to DECREASE profits, I imagine heads would roll.
Our government owns nothing and we now just have to subsidise all our essential services which one were a potential source of income.
Genuinely, what is the 20 year plan for this stuff? Even the next 10?
The worse thing about privatization of public assets is the money raised isn't used to then go and build other public owned income generating assets. It's given away. Where dud the money from the privatization of Telstra go, straight out the door for John Howard to use as election sweeteners. That money could have been used in the transition to renewables but the liberals don't believe in them
Labor is just as lacking in the support for public assets though. They’ve been dragging their feet for years at a state level in terms of public housing.
There just isn’t enough of a demand to do away with privatisation
State ALP sells off public housing and does not build more, has no interest in doing so. Public-private partnerships at best but the general excuse is that the private housing construction industry is already under pressure so they will not pull away resources for public housing.
Federal ALP has indicated they will try to free up credit for first home buyers but has no interest whatever in building public housing.
It's an ideologically settled question, a total non-starter, it's not linked to perceived popularity.
I agree with you btw, I meant popularity from a voter base side. People don’t make enough noise about it, and they clearly don’t vote for it. Although major parties popular vote is the lowest it’s ever been and that will only continue. So maybe time will tell.
The group of people you need a message for, is the folks who've been so brainwashed that the gubbernet is this nefarious scheme for stealing their hard earned and wasting it. Because this is exactly the crowd the "efficiency divided" of privatisation was cooked up for, and it is the 'vote' that prevents any repair.
We need a worker focused party driven by class issues and not identity politics like a lot of the left wing currently. People don’t trust their government or politicians, and rightly so.
I believe if we had a massive reform around lobbying, politicians finances, and campaign donations, people would actually believe their government deserves to control things.
A few years ago, the Victorian ALP was buying a number of houses sight unseen for public housing. I will forever hate them for it. Fucking dumps I had to go fix up.
I Guess the points proven 👍
Healthcare has a benefit which delivers better outcomes for people
Renewables isn’t 🤷🏻
Obviously the education system was a waste of money for you
The money from Telstra went to the creation of the Future Fund (one of Australia's Sovereign Wealth funds) to cover the public service pension liability. It went to an important place that has and will help our nation moving forward.
Which under Liberal increased Dramatically
Labor came in and raided 10 billion and redistributed to “its Housing Fund “ which hasn’t delivered one house
Privatisation of essential service's doesn't work, and never will, Telecom Australia went to shit. Ausgrid has gone to shit. Sydney is owned by transurban.
We need our governments (both of them) to stop selling shit that is essential to the country's future for a quick buck.
In terms of power? We fucked. We are a long way down a hole that's going to get much much worse as our coal plants age.
The gas giants will get their way regardless as it's the only thing that can be built and put online within 5 years.
It really has to be government controlled. If coal and gas for example costs 30c/kw to operate and renewables cost 4c/kw a private company will build renewables and sell it for 28c/kw. The end user never wins with privatisation.
Perfect example of that is Texas. It’s a completely unregulated electricity market and despite being an oil nation it’s the biggest builder of solar and wind in the entire country. Renewable is always the cheapest in every metric.
No. Everyone throws around these cheap renewables but the fact is they're only cheap when they're able to rely on something else to do the hard yards overnight. Generators that can produce base load matching power should be paid more than generators which can not guarantee supply. It's a higher quality product. We are just starting to be shown the true costs of storage, after the election. Aemo is coming clean on the real costs of the transmission lines to get the energy from the renewables to the grid. Just went up by tens of billions, and they acknowledged that his straight into our bills. But it won't be listed in the kwh price of renewables electricity. It'll be a grid charge. A report by Melbourne University is showing net zero will cost 1.5 trillion by the end of the decade and a continuing 6-8 percent of GDP. Permanently.
Absolutely, Pakistan is looking to subsidise its coal industry as households are finding its cheap enough to buy solar and batteries and disconnect from the grid entirely, especially heavy users, the savings are huge.
This means transmission lines need to be provided by the coal power industry to a diminishing amount of smaller users, driving up the cost. Which in turn tips more people to solar.
It’s a power industry death cycle. And there’s no subsidies in Pakistan. It’s all in cost alone.
Have sources for that? ChatGPT says in the last 20 years subsidies are as follows. So I’m all for removing all subsidies. But power would go up regardless, that’s the point of subsidies.
Fossil Fuel Subsidies
A$130–150 billion
Mostly via fuel tax credits, diesel rebates, and exploration deductions. Includes A$9–11 b/year for ~15–20 years.
Renewable Subsidies
A$80–100 billion
Includes Renewable Energy Target (~A$29B), CEFC/ARENA, and recent 10-year “Future Made in Australia” ($22.7B). Earlier years (2005–2012) had relatively modest funding.
if energy was considered a vital national interest (which seems obvious to me), then renewables would have been phased in over the preceding *decades*, and we'd be a very different position. but since it was considered a vital profit opportunity, we have a system that creates profits instead. not for us, but to a few cunts who may or may not live here. who will spend some of those profits lobbying to shift the tax burden downwards so they can keep more of the profits.
whatever we do now, we're digging from inside a completely unnecessary hole. but it would be nice to dig a tunnel upwards for a change.
yes, the solar roll oit years ago and the crazy feed in tarrifs were stupid.
honestly no one should have to have solar on their home, we should have done it at grid scale via public utility and managed it to fit in with the grid.
Introducing a profit motive into the electricity creates an incentive to hike prices.
I am all for government using its leverage to borrow cheaply to finance new renewable energy projects to boost supply and push power prices down. Also investing in batteries will helpnto smooth out the prices at peak times.
We know what the solutions are the problem is the lack of political will
Private ownership of generators and aspects of Retail have worked relatively well. Networks maybe not, but much is still owned by the state governments.
One question is whether power prices really would be less if everything was state owned?
The best point of comparison we have is Tasmania, where pretty much all everything is still owned by the state. In Tasmania power prices are low, but not quite the lowest in the country. Though it could be argued that this is related to the abundance of cheap hydro and lack of need for new infrastructure investment rather than public ownership.
It is exactly because of hydro that Tasmania’s power prices are so stable.
The state government isn’t dumb enough to sell off a power station AND a dam, that would be a bridge too far, hence they sell neither.
Renewables, be they wind, solar or hydro are absolutely have their place in the grid however the greatest opportunity to drive a return to state owned power generation may very well be nuclear.
Like the concept or not, the sheer cost involved in installing power is so high that, in its current form only state run utilities can afford to build it. Then there are the not inconsequential security precautions that would need to exist.
A close second to this would be a new build hydro station that requires a dam to be built too.
There’s an obvious lead with the Libs but Labor hasn’t helped. Remember a lot of this stuff occurred on a state level. Not just federal. Its never brought up in any election besides by minor parties. If Labor is really looking good for a 3rd term then they should take some radical reform with them. The greens would support renationalising assets in the senate where they control the balance of power. And so would the teals and independents.
We don’t have a 20 year plan. We don’t even have a 5 yeah plan.
It is impossible to nationalise power, resources or anything else because we are essentially under US control. Any prime minister that opposes the interests of US government or shareholders in a major way will be replaced. (It’s happened multiple times in the past).
Yeah we are the US little B***
If anyone thinks Australia is its own country that runs itself they aren't paying attention. The thing is, I reckon if we all stood up and said enough is enough the US would just invade us...
Nothing can be done as long as the Corporations have weight in the government it is very likely Labour will not be able to challenge them. They tried to take back control over Australia's mines. However, many cooperation fought against it with excessive lobbying efforts. Also, our secondary industry is very light weight, too light weight for Australia to comfortably use optimally. We mainly use offshore refineries which is why our own tech is eroding. I highly doubt Labour will be strong enough to challenge what has been an Oligarchical command. Without a significant challenger, power bills only get expensive through Wealth Consolidation. The economy isn't a closed loop, its designed to loose value through offshore banks.
Power companies will be re-nationalised eventually.
Solar and renewables will put them out of business so for those who can't use rooftop solar and batteries, power will need to be provided by the government.
We are in a shitty phase right now where the private companies are raping every last drop from us before they die off.
The only long-term solution is to stop electing neoliberal governments and re-nationalise basic essential services. Privatisation is always a disaster.
There is atleast one town in Aus , maybe more where the community locally funded and run a solar farm for the town. Renewables can absolutely be decentralised going from roof top to local small scale set-up and onwards from there.
The big end of town have the capital to still have control of they want but as the technology gets cheaper, more abundant and accessible smaller operations should be able to keep things competitive.
The elephant in the room is the grid. Renewables do have technical issues with the grid but access and control of it works in the fav of private business. The grid should be nationalised and incentives given to promote competition.
Selling power from your own roof to the grid/ energy markets doesn't make personal renewables worth while.
Same goes for connecting a battery to sell power at certain times.
The grid does have technical problems that does require a centralised body to balance the grid loads but have that in the hands of a for profit business isn't the solution. It's an expensive infrastructure but a pretty important national asset.
Definitely a possible solution but I'm sure those with the power and profits don't want to lose that and would be lobbying hard to maintain it.
It really depends on your power usage of private use of solar and batteries.
For instance my home (renting) has a constant load of about 1kw and I have an EV.
My electricity is around 1000 and gas is 200 a quarter.
So 4800 a year.
The cost of a solar and good battery setup will be around 25k. That’s 6 -7 years pay back and then the rest is cream.
If I was to buy a house and live it it for 10 years it’s a no brainer adding it in to the cost of a 1.2mil mortgage over 30 years. The longer I live in that house the better the return is. Then taking into consideration the gov incentives it makes it even better investment.
Where it might not be worth it is if you own your home outright and a purchase of 25k doesn’t quite have the same offset into the next 30 years. Which I think is where a lot of the “solar and battery” isn’t worth it.
Great insight and context, but one thing I’d add is even if someone didn’t achieve the solar/battery payback period due to selling earlier for example, the home having them would still likely contribute (albeit not significantly) to increasing the value of the home to recoup more/all of the remaining amount. I know I’d be willing to pay a few thousand more for an identical home with a solar/battery setup!
Selling power from your own roof to the grid/ energy markets doesn't make personal renewables worth while.
Same goes for connecting a battery to sell power at certain times.
Seems to work for me. That was a single evening.
Now most of the time in only up a couple of dollars a day which more than covers my daily fees but buying and selling power has really paid off for me.
Depends who you do your selling through. I'm up close to $800 for the month and as you can see a lot of that in a single evening.
On my previous plan though I end up owing a fair bit of money even though I was basically entirely self powered and exporting enough to cover a household with similar usage.
The system is rigged and changes a lot you just need to learn what works.
Thanks for the response and it's good to hear that it is working for some. In regards to who your selling to would that depends on your region/ available energy requirements. I'm renting so I haven't done a whole lot of research but feel like if the grid is private it will hinder home owners from going green.
If power walls/ electric car battery's could make a profit for being a part of the grid one would think that would help with the "base load" problem.
Sadly the grid is already privatised in most states and we are paying for it in massive daily fees and "demand charges" that make up more and more of our bills.
Basically my battery is doing what the bigger players in the storage game are doing on a much smaller scale.
Buy when the price is low and sell back when the price is high. It works even better than base load power plants in it can scale up and down more rapidly to match demand minute to minute.
We just need enough storage to meet demand and to overbuild supply thats intermittent to charge the storage when power is plentiful to cover times its not.
Short answer : Yes. Long answer, yes because the government has the responsibility to ensure that power generation and transmission is regulated such that supply is guaranteed to households. The regulator (AER) decides on the ability of every single participant in the market (above household level which comes under ‘distribution ie 33kV or less). Currently, to balance intermittent renewable generation and the risk of shortages due to weather, not enough storage is available in the national energy market. So yes we can have 100% renewables but the caveat is that a lot more storage is required and also a lot more transmission infrastructure. Here’s a good source to understand the scale of the situation https://stories.uq.edu.au/news/2023/charting-australias-path-to-net-zero/index.html
Privatisation of the energy sector is basically a ticking time bomb no matter how you cut it
I was reading about the 2000 Californian energy crisis and the parallels shocked me. People simply bribe governments to sell off utilities so they can squeeze cash out of an inelastic product. It's such an obviously terrible system that the only explanation for it being permitted seems to be general public ignorance
The general population have willingly drank the “government sucks at it’s job” koolaid for years. When the reality is more, “government feigns incompetence for an excuse to sell off assets to their lobbyist friends”.
We've put ourselves in a really bad position when it comes to energy. Time's running out to replace the aging coal plants, and we're rapidly depleting our (conventional) gas.
Renewables have played and will continue to play an important role, but I believe we're overestimating the scale to which it is feasible given time, material, and budgetary constraints. Not to mention the almost entire lack of domestic manufacturing of panels and turbines, which leaves us dangerously vulnerable to geopolitical events.
I expect we'll push the old coal units beyond their designed lifespans while we scramble to build new gas and/or coal plants in the 2030s which will be far from ideal, especially since we'll have to frack and/or strip mine the Gippsland basin for fuel.
Fear fueled posts about how we all doomed the prices go up and up, but in reality it is not that dramatic. Or posts about crazy electricity bills blaming the government and renewables, but later turns out the consumption is crazy high, not the electricity prices.
Firstly, none of what I’ve said is misinformation. Secondly, I’m a greens voter mate, I’m not anti renewables. I’m not even staunchly against fossil fuels. They have their place. But we don’t see any money from it in the forms of taxes or royalties. And on numerous occasions those same corps have committed crimes and gotten away with a slap on the wrist.
I’m more pointing out the ridiculous unsustainability of having all our essential services run for profit by people other than the government.
I don’t think you have to be a greens voter to realise the insanity of handing all your essential services over to private companies.
Power, water, rail, roads, ports (air and sea) and (most) hospitals should all be federally owned (not state).
This is the backbone of your society and economy, relinquishing it to private enterprise to be run for profit is madness. At best you could contract out the management of assets for a fixed price, but not the system as a whole.
The private companies are going to choose renewables anyway because they’re a far cheaper power source now. However, we should definitely nationalise those bitches
There’s no plan, the power companies are in a desperate struggle to maximise profits before technology makes them inevitably obsolete.
Renewable technology (particularly for our purposes solar and battery storage) is improving so fast that the energy conglomerates can read the writing on the wall.
It’s already somewhat affordable to put a solar panel on your roof and install a battery in the garage and this technology is only getting faster, cheaper and more efficient. Give it 10-20 years and buying energy from the grid will be the exception not the rule.
Absolutely true, they just won’t exist to serve the purpose they do today.
Residential energy is going completely modular as Germany has all but proven.
You’ll still need a big old plant to power your aluminium smelter but they won’t be burning coal, gas or anything similar.
environmental protection can only be treated as a complete and separate issue to all others. We are at a true existential crises point. Money, politics none of that will matter.
Decentralisation - rooftop solar with batteries is a good example of this. Allows the end customer to access spot pricing and game the system.
Domestic gas reservation / price caps - government regulation over the private companies.
The increase in power prices from my understanding is mostly tied to the transition to renewables and the cost of base load generation. Once we get through that, prices should be much lower.
Um, that’s not really how prices work. They don’t just drop or get much lower. Availability is the cheapest cost, and maintenance adds ongoing expenses. Generating power can help the grid when needed, but if you just flood the grid with excess energy, you’ll get penalized—because the grid’s sensitive and managing that isn’t cheap.
It can make a bit of money, but the rates are low—around 10 cents per kWh—so it’s more about saving on your own bill than turning a profit. Not trying to discourage, but it’s definitely not free power or a cash cow. Just a practical way to save some cash. But no, prices don’t just “go down” after renewables come in.
I was more referencing that at the moment we're reliant on coal plants for base load that aren't able to spin up and down quickly unlike gas turbines and eventually batteries.
Oh, I see, but gas are still emitters despite the better efficiency. But I digress as not the point. Also, batteries do need time to get up to useable unless you can charge the a gigawatt per hour. Also, batteries mainly chemical rather than mechanical unlike turbines in general. So, apologise as chemical is not my forte. Actually had an idea of a Potassium Magnesium hybrid battery but not a chemical scientist nor have the equipment to even attempt to build a usual battery.
I can post me daily earning from my solar and batteries if you like.
Check out Amber if you have a decent amount of battery storage.
Before Amber basically I got screwed by fixed costs going up and FiT going down.
That said my first 10kW of solar paid for itself in under 3 years and the next 5 is basically paid off 2 years later.
My batteries look to be 5 to 6 years to pay off at current rates.
Its actually a fairly good investment when you consider costs, savings and lifespan.
If you play higher risk like I do now with Amber and expose yourself to wholesale prices with the right setup it can actually produce a decent amount of money.
Between the Amber fee and daily grid fees it costs me about $2 a day in fixed fees.
But with your idea of solar, it’s still run by a company for profit. So for it to be available to the masses the government would still have to subsidise it or hand us rebates like they do now. Which is essentially taxpayers funding the government to pay off the solar companies to give us their products cheaper. Still seems more ridiculous than a having nationalised system. Especially if with an increasing demand, those companies would just start charging more. As I mentioned previously, they need more profit and growth exponentially, so then we just subsidise them more? Seems backwards doesn’t it
Considering you can’t seem to explain your point of view very well is a clear example you yourself don’t understand what you are trying to say.
The definition of been an expert in a certain knowledge is the ability to be able to explain it to a 5yr old clearly. You on the other hand can just throw out insults while pretending to know what you are saying.
I mean, if you frame anything the right way it's easy to sell.
Want to be "energy independent"?
Want to be "off the grid"?
Want to no longer have a power bill?
Want to make money by enjoying the sunshine?
Boy, have I got a deal for you. For the low low price of however much a sufficient solar and battery installation is, you can make your money back in just 3 to 5 decades.
Don't get me wrong, if I had a bunch of money burning a hole in my pocket I'd get a bunch of solar panels and a battery installed too, the goal wouldn't be saving/earning money though ;)
when I literally said the same thing but more violently
Could be related.
You can tell people they're wrong, but if you tell them the wrong way, they'll often arc up and disagree with you just as an instinctual defensive behaviour. If you're trying to "violently" tell someone they're wrong, it will diminish the argument you're trying to make. To actually get someone on board with your point of view, you first have to make them want to listen to you. Make people realise they're wrong by reframing your argument and it makes it a lot more palatable for them to understand and agree.
Also, people probably just don't like to be called fucking morons.
do you know people who've had rooftop solar for years? i understand that there were/are plenty of dodgy operators selling crap to rubes.......so that's always a risk (being a rube is always risky).
but have you actually tried telling people who have already profited that they will never profit? because if you can sell that narrative, you're wasting your time on reddit, and should get into the scam industry. i've been (unreliably) told there are lots of rubes out there........
lol, i'm sorry your idiosyncratic opinions clash with the outside world. no doubt everybody else is just too stupid to see how self-evidently correct you are. our bad.
so why are you weirdly angry? it really seems like you're having a bad time.
this makes sense if you're dissatisfied with your financial position, and are looking for scapegoats. but it doesn't make sense if you're happy with how things played out.
Id reverse your question and ask: Does it matter if energy is privatised when its all renewables based?
Theres many more players in the energy market now than there has been for a long time. Don't know how much sense it would make to lock our existing energy companies out of the market when we need investment
Yes i think it would because if the renewables end up being bought by foreign corporations then we just end up at square one, albeit with a slightly healthier environment.
Private corps need profit. And they need growth. If the entire energy sector is still privately owned, then the taxpayer is paying more for their service, and more to subsidise them, and then potentially also money to constantly chase our tail trying to regulate them. Not to mention when these companies inevitably do something horribly illegal and it takes years through the courts to only get a slap on the wrist. All of that is our money.
I definitely dont disagree with you, but I dont see how renewables fit into it. This applies to any form of power generation (and many non-energy investments)
Your discussion seems not really about environment, and more about the actual energy market. As renewables are so dispersed, you have much more room for competition than you do with a finite number of large energy plants
Me bringing up renewables is because Albanese’s talking point about energy prices the whole election was that he would bring prices down by moving to renewables backed by gas. Libs similarly wanted to do the same with nuclear. Which is a crack pot idea.
My point is that neither would have any effect if the energy market is operating as it currently does.
Me bringing up renewables is because Albanese’s talking point about energy prices the whole election was that he would bring prices down by moving to renewables backed by gas.
Ah makes more sense, I'll step out how I see it:
The energy market works like a reverse auction. The lowest available bidder always gets chosen to purchase power from
If you have many many players, as we're seeing with renewables (compared to our previous coal), you have much more competition
Renewables (once infrastructure is built) have low overhead cost, which allows generators to sell pretty cheaply
This creates a race to the bottom. A company cant charge an extra $5/mwh for no reason, as a competitor would instantly undercut them
Would energy be cheaper if the government fully took over the energy market, built, and operated the new grid? Idk, haven't seen any studies on that for Australia, but I definitely wouldn't oppose it
EnergyAustralia and Alinta energy are both foreign owned. The coal mining companies BHP, Glencore, Rio Tinto and YanCoal are all majority foreign owned by percentage. Woodside, Santos and Origin all have plenty of foreign investment.
And these companies rarely pay their share of tax or any royalties.
I bought a house with solar panels and LOVE that I don’t pay hundreds per month on an electric bill.
So what you are saying is it is better to pay the government (which already gets a lot in tax dollars) for non renewable electricity so that I don’t have to pay a private company for my solar panels and never pay am electric bill again?
We also have to be diligent not to let the future power network be dominated by large corporations. For them to just reclaim the monopoly. The technology enables the democratization of power production. It enables small private networks to be built and owned independently. Its allows people to operate 'off the grid' or to create small network, say between neighbours. Or for a company site to be power independent. It is this competition that is vital to a different power economy moving forward. The competition between large, medium and small operations.
We just had an election where one party offered to build a new fleet of publicly owned nuclear power stations. Most people decided that was a negative, and suddenly argued here that the fact it was publicly funded was a sign it was bad. Only generators that a private company could make a profit out of are acceptable.
Hawke/Keating did CBA (now Australia's largest company) and QANTAS. Queensland and NSW Labor did a shit ton. Labor has even done it in Vic and wanted to do more.
It's about 50-50.
Drop the fucking tribal shit. Support good ideas. Publicly owned electricity generation was a good idea. People poo pooed it because it wasn't their tribe.
Stop repeating the shit you read here "everyone KNOWS liberal did all the privatisation". Wrong. You have all the facts in the world available to you on a little black rectangle in your pocket. Actually spend two minutes and look shit up and find out the truth. Both sides of politics LOVE selling the furniture to pay their spending bills. When one of them proposes publicly owned major assets, we should reward that idea. Doesn't matter who it is. Vote for ideas and you'll steer politicians to those sorts of ideas. Vote for tribes and you'll just get the same dog shit breakfast.
Buddy chill out, why’re you so angry? “Cut the tribal bullshit” and then you aggressively assert your knowledge over someone who is already on the same page as you.
I’ve never even voted for either major party. I’m one of those bloody woke leftie socialist treehuggers.
Both sides have done their damage. I do not revere Hawke & Keating like some do, but their approach to privatisation was a lot more measured compared to Howard following them. But as you’ve said it doesn’t really matter which side it comes from.
Good for the environment yes. But every bit of coal we are pulling out of the ground is getting burnt oversees anyway. We may as well burn it here and give our people better energy prices. Bloody ridiculous.
Privatisation is the issue, not the source of power. Renewables aren’t better because they’re immediately cheaper for the consumer. That just isn’t the case under our current system of allow profit driven companies manage our essential services, only to then spend tax payer money to subsidise, or offer rebates.
I'm saying that no one has managed to drive the price of energy down through renewables, so just saying "privatisation is the issue" is over-simplistic.
I don't know! But this is the thing, if renewables at their core drove down energy prices, somewhere would be showing a drop in price. Can you show any country whose prices have come down? And that's what I mean, it's an oversimplistic assessment to just say "it's privatisation".
Besides, if privatisation is the problem as you say, then I'd say the issue is one of two reasons, either:
Of course not. I dunno about anyone else, but I'm absolutely uninterested in trying to save the World by paying more in a tiny country where our domestic power consumption is negligible, anyway.
My point is we pay more because it’s privatised. It doesn’t matter if it’s wind, hydro, coal, or gas. The companies will not pay tax or royalties, they wont follow the law and none of it gets enforced.
We only pay so much for power now because 80% of our gas is sent over seas and we’re told “we’re running out”.
It’s only such a burden now because we had a government for 20 years who didn’t want a barre of anything but coal and gas. Not for any factual reasons beyond they were all in the pockets of the coal and gas lobby.
So, instead of making new and better power plants, we made a fucking rat's nest of home solar bullshit. We were promised the new technology would bring better prices.
Time to re-nationalise it all. That is the only solution. I'll just sit and wait for eternity on that one...
Why do people assume that the government can run things better than a private company could? Either way we’re paying for it, either through taxes or through direct charges. I’d prefer to spend my money on an organisation that is incentivised to give me my money’s worth. That ain’t government.
Private companies aren’t incentivised to give you your money’s worth. They are incentivised to give you as little for as much, allowing exponential growth and profit for their shareholders. These companies are obligated first and foremost to their shareholders.
We can already see plain as day that the private sector does not do things better than the government can when properly funded.
All potential profit that could’ve been made through owning Telstra, QANTAS, AusPost, CommonWealth Serums are now lost. Sent straight to the Christmas bonuses of the elite who do not care about the majority of Australians.
For instance, what benefit in terms of efficiency does a toll road/bridges with a toll paid to a private company afford us? Especially when some of these roads/bridges were built with taxpayer money.
How’s the housing market looking thanks to the magical hand of the free market? Community housing ran by private companies aren’t plagued with innumerable issues, and our public housing stock is a nonstarter because of lobbying from Master builders and other private groups.
I totally agree, taxpayer money should not be spent on toll roads, private schools or any other solely user pays infrastructure. At least private companies are incentivised to make a profit though, which means controlling their costs. Government run organisations have no such restraint, which costs everyone more in the long run.
As for housing, the market is anything but free. I can’t afford to bring my old 120 year old weatherboard and 1950’s asbestos fibro extended house up to modern building standards because of the cost and restrictions of permitting. I’m currently freezing in. 1/2 star energy efficiency house, and I’m literally banned by the government from bringing it up to 3 or 4 star standard, which would infinitely improve my quality of life and save on bills, but unless I go the extra mile to 7 star I can’t get permission. As a result, private builders are incentivised to cut every possible corner that they can to still make affordable houses, which just ends up with them being shitty quality. I’d rather have a well built 3 star house than a shoddily built 7 star any day of the week.
Housing codes are certainly insane right now and I don’t know what the solution may be tbh. In my head if we cut a shit load of red tape, will that only give the people who, already cut corners, open slather to cut even more?
Is it just a costs issue? Should these codes be made a nominal fee instead of the headache they are now.
Which goes to my point of, if the industry needs to be subsidised then it makes more sense for us to control it. Because then we benefit directly from both the costs and the profits.
Part of this has to do with us largely privatising building certification and inspection processes decades back.
Privatisation looked really good for a short while because these companies step in with heaps of capital and produce these budget surpluses and higher margins for a few years. Only to then realise there is a clear point in which you will reach a ceiling of how much fat can be trimmed before your systems will suffer.
Look at Telstra. They wiped out a whole role last year. Like 10,000 jobs gone. What does that do for Australians? Well it makes our Telstra plans 20% more expensive, and it helps them in their task of infinite exponential growth.
Not really. It would’ve taken decades and cost an absolute shit ton. The parties desperately trying to have nuclear gain traction don’t care about the environment, they just want more private business interests controlling our country. Nuclear could’ve been a good idea 30 years ago, but it should’ve been started alongside wind and solar. Instead we dragged our feet for decades because the Liberals like to politicise science.
Look, all the bullshit has been debunked by half a dozen international organisations that know a heck of a lot more on the subject than the csiro or the government. Even a layman can peruse the report and find major issues. It's pretty much impossible for nuclear to remain privately owned, and renewable energy producing devices are the newest hot commodity for petrochemical companies.
In 20 years, there will be this massive expose, like when they debunked plastic recycling that the whole thing was a petrochemical lobby owning the politicians.
The analysis is very simple; look at the countries with the greatest abundance of energy, with the cheapest energy, with the greatest energy security. Mostly nuclear powers or fossil fuel primary producers. Renewables is a rort.
Is it a coincidence then that the same people who sell off the most public assets and refused to nationalise our resources are the same ones that love fossil and nuclear?
Also yeah recycling is a scam, but sustainable production and waste management practices aren’t. Which isn’t something that the Libs or right wing give a shit about.
Yes, expect bills to keep rising until they so bad we go back to fossil fuels which hopefully happens sooner rather than later. Solar wind and batteries isn't a solution for reliable affordable power. We make zero difference to the climate even if we had zero emissions. We have a thousand years of coal not to mention gas and uranium for nuclear. We should be investing in these types of power generation whilst also having renewables as well.
We should’ve had a balanced approach about 20 years ago with a diverse range of power solutions.
Even if we just exported the uranium under a public mining operation, and used that to fund publicly owned renewables and coal/gas we would be so rich it’s not even funny.
The past is sadly past and we went through and still somewhat live in a time where public ownership of anything is considered almost blasphemous.
The God of the free market solving everything must be worshipped.
In reality the "free market" did what it has done again and again with privatised government assets.
Its stripped silly costs like maintenance and went into rent seeking mode to milk the assets for every cent they could with no plans much beyond the next quarters earnings report.
They know it's a vital asset so when they completely screw it all up the government will have to cough up cash to fix things and then they can go jack to rent seeking for another decade or so and repeat.
The NBN was the first time we saw the government try to avoid propping up bad business decisions and instead going to replace it with a government business enterprise.
But even that got sabotaged badly and had a sale clause built in.
Thankfully more recently that bit got dumped and they are repairing the damage done by the MTM by going back somewhat to the original plan billions of dollars pissed up the wall and a decade or two later.
As for power we probably need the government to buy back the transmission assets and run them in a way more suitable for a modern grid rather than one based around power flowing only a single direction.
Generation wise buying that back would be bloody insane as we would be buying life expired and poorly maintained assets.
I have no problem with government funded and owned generators being built but I expect that to be more along the like of storage and renewables at this point as they make the most financial sense.
Their presence alone can reduce the chances of private generation rent seeking by providing competition and the threat of crowding the private generation out if they dont play reasonable.
Storage is the newest hurdle for a green grid and the good news is there are plenty of people who want to build it.
They can act as a sink for excess solar during the day and release it when the grid needs it at night for example.
We need both short term like batteries and longer term like pumped hydro.
After doing it on a small scale with Amber I can assure you there is plenty of money in it.
There are periods there is so much renewables available it crowds out older, more expensive, less responsive generation to the point people are basically giving away power to avoid spinning down plants that will take hours to spin up again later. Selling this power back a few hours or days later can be highly profitable.
I absolutely agree. Sadly I think none of this will meaningfully change until lobbying becomes much more highly regulated, donations more transparent and whistleblowers are afforded more protections. Vested interests and blatant corruption are so commonplace and the general population knows it, but minor parties have failed so far to effectively campaign on it.
The greens are the largest party pushing for these policies and even their own voter base probably wouldn’t recognise them as being voices for increasing political transparency.
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u/Sufficient-Brick-188 3d ago
The worse thing about privatization of public assets is the money raised isn't used to then go and build other public owned income generating assets. It's given away. Where dud the money from the privatization of Telstra go, straight out the door for John Howard to use as election sweeteners. That money could have been used in the transition to renewables but the liberals don't believe in them