Australian Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction & Liberal MP for Hume Angus Taylor is not having a good year

The Guardian, 26 October 2019:

Clover Moore rejects Angus Taylor's explanation of document he used to attack her............ Sydney’s lord mayor has categorically rejected Angus Taylor’s version of how he came to rely on 
inaccurate figures of the council’s travel spending to attack her, saying “there were no alternative versions of the document” on 
the council’s website at any time.

INFOGRAPHIC: Energy Minister Angus Taylor has once again 

repeated a misleading claim on inheriting an "emissions deficit" 

from Labor. (RMIT ABC Fact Check), 24 October 2019

The Guardian at 4:05pm on 24 October 2019 reported that Labor will refer the matter of the alleged false documents used by Minister for Energy Angus Taylor to the police under Sect 253 of the Crimes Act 1900 if the federal government doesn't do so within 24 hours.

The Guardian, 23 October 2019:

Angus Taylor baselessly accused Sydney’s lord mayor of driving
up carbon emissions by spending $15m on travel, a claim that was 
later backed up with a doctored council document provided to the 
Daily Telegraph, which reported the figure.

On 30 September, the Telegraph reported on page three that the 
“City of Sydney Council’s outlay on flights outstrips that of 
Australia’s foreign ministers”.

The story quoted a letter sent by Taylor to the mayor, Clover 
Moore, saying the council’s annual report for 2017-18 “shows 
your council spent $1.7m on international travel and $14.2m 
on domestic travel”, contrasting the spending with Moore’s 
declaration of a climate emergency in June.

City of Sydney’s publicly available annual report shows 
councillors spent $1,727.77 on overseas travel and $4,206.32 
on domestic travel. 

In total, the council spent $229,000 on travel during 2017-18, 
under its $300,000 budget.After the story was published, Moore
vigorously disputed the figures on Twitter. In subsequent emails 
between the Telegraph and Moore’s office, the paper justified the 
figures using a document supplied by Taylor’s office, purporting 
to be the council’s annual report.

But the document provided to the Telegraph shows wildly different 
figures, which appeared in a strange format unlike the one used 
elsewhere in the annual report.

It is unclear who altered the document. There is no suggestion 
that Taylor himself was responsible.

The council is adamant that it did not alter the figures. It said it 
had checked the metadata to establish that the report had not 
been changed on its website since being posted in November 
2018.

The Daily Telegraph & ANGUS TAYLOR ‼️

3 options you could be:

STUPID
DISHONEST
BOTH

No one expects any better from the Murdoch Press then again no expects any better from Angus Taylor just waiting for his next sleazy deal.#Auspol

Link to full story: https://t.co/3mZTUud5oN pic.twitter.com/b6PGDdJfMR

— 💧 Sleeping Giants Oz 📣 (@slpng_giants_oz) October 23, 2019

The Guardian, 24 August 2019:

Angus Taylor did not declare at a meeting with environment 
officials about critically endangered grasslands that he had 
a financial interest in a company that was under investigation 
for poisoning them.

And no notes were taken by the senior department official 
who attended the meeting in 2017, a Senate committee has
heard.

Officials from the environment and energy department gave 
the evidence at a special hearing of the Senate’s inquiry into 
the extinction crisis on Friday....

ABC News, 20 August 2019:

New figures show Australia's carbon emissions are continuing 
to climb despite Federal Government assurances it has the 
policy framework to address climate change.

In the year to March, emissions rose 0.6 per cent on the previous 
year, according to data released by Energy and Emissions 
Reduction Minister Angus Taylor......

The Guardian, 2 May 2019:

The energy minister, Angus Taylor, has denied he played a role 
in structuring the company which received an $80m government 
buyback of its water rights through the tax haven of the Cayman Islands.

Taylor, who was a director of Eastern Australia Agriculture between 
2008 and 2009 and who described himself as a co-founder of the 
company, told ABC Radio National on Thursday morning he was 
involved only in advising on the agricultural side of the investment.

He said he severed all involvement in the company prior to being 
elected to parliament.

EAA was paid $80m for its overland flow water rights without 
tender in 2017 when Barnaby Joyce was agriculture minister......

Still no hope of a genuine national energy policy as crew on the sinking liner SS Liberal Party brawl on deck

Financial Review, 19 December 2018:

NSW Climate and Energy Minister Don Harwin vowed to push on with his crusade to "end the Canberra climate wars" after federal minister Angus Taylor derailed his proposal to plot a national pathway to net zero emissions by 2050 at an acrimonious Council of Australian Governments' meeting.

Tempers flared at the meeting of energy ministers in Adelaide after Mr Taylor used an obscure procedural rule to block Mr Harwin's motion for a net zero emissions pathway. A furious Mr Harwin said that if Mr Taylor was going to use obscure procedural rules to block a motion supported by most state and territory energy ministers "be it on your own head".

The bitter split between the NSW and federal coalition governments comes as Gladys Berejiklian's NSW Coalition government faces a March 23 election in which climate policy looms large after voters sharply rejected the Morrison government's climate change agnostic energy policies at the Wentworth byelection in October and the Victorian state election in November.

Mr Harwin said in a statement after the meeting: "I am very disappointed by the actions of the federal government at COAG Energy Council in Adelaide today.

"The refusal, on procedural grounds, to let the vital matter of restoring an emissions obligation into national energy policy be discussed is extraordinary. NSW will continue to pursue this critical matter with COAG Energy Council."

…..the NSW-federal government stoush dominated the aftermath of the meeting as Mr Harwin told reporters he was furious that "the Commonwealth used the rule book to try and shutdown a discussion on emissions".

"As a sign of how out of touch they are, they wouldn't let us have the discussion," Mr Harwin said. "NSW is not giving up on this. It's absolutely imperative that we end the Canberra climate wars. "

Australian Politics 2018: This Federal Government Can’t Do Anything Right

Reared with a sense of righteous self-importance, fed on a diet of IPA ideology with a side dish of entitlement, brought to Canberra by the Old Boy’s Network, then fattened into self-complacency by the political perks of office, this particular Coalition Government (which took the reins of government in 2013 and kept them in 2016) was always a puny failure.

Faced on a daily basis with its own failings this clueless federal government scrabbled about for years before turning bitter, vindictive and intent on destruction.

Here is yet another example of the Morrison Government’s inability to do more than spin its wheels…..

Financial Review, 26 October 2018:

Federal energy minister Angus Taylor's roundtable aimed at forcing big energy companies to lower their standing offers for retail power by January 1 is under a cloud because of real fears this could amount to an illegal cartel.

Energy industry sources say the legal risks of breaching cartel laws - jail terms and massive fines for individual executives - are too great for them to risk at a roundtable at which issues of pricing will be hanging in the air even if not explicitly discussed.

Mr Taylor dismissed suggestions that the round table could breach competition laws.

"Of course we're not going to breach the Australian laws; we don't do that," he told reporters after the COAG Energy Council meeting in Sydney.

But he signalled that all the invited retailers may not attend the round table, at which the government would outline its policies and expectations that the sector will deliver price cuts for consumers.

"We're looking forward to as many electricity providers coming to the round table as want to come along," Mr Taylor said.

The energy companies' fears of breaching the cartel laws are heightened because they have been under permanent surveillance on pricing by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for the last 18 months and the government recently extended that monitoring until 2025.

As well, cartel laws have been widened to include so called "signalling" and other forms of tacit agreement falling short of explicit price fixing agreements during the last decade because offences were too difficult to prove in court under the previous, much stricter definition.

Mr Taylor wrote to energy companies on Tuesday inviting them to a "roundtable" to discuss the reductions in their standing offers they will be required to make for January 1, 2019 - before the July 1 scrapping of standing offers which are to be replaced by the "default" tariff to be set by the Australian Energy Regulator by April 30.

 Read the full article here.

Australia has a prime minister who rejects realitiy and embraces idiocy

Scott Morrison with a coal specimen supplied by the Minerals Council of Australia
ABC News, 9 February 2018

During an interview with the ABC 7.30 program on 11 September 2018 Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison declared he is “troubled” by the politics of envy in Australia and has “a very strong view” on what fairness means.

His version of “fairness” is a redefinition far removed from the contents of any dictionary wherein it is usually taken to mean impartial and just treatment or behaviour without favouritism or discrimination.

His expresses his version of fairness as “those that have a go get a go” or “a fair go for those that have a go”– phrases that are inherently judgemental.

It seems that in Morrison's world only individuals who are already capable of helping themselves in some fashion will deserve assistance from others.

Morrison again refused to say why the parliamentary Liberal Party changed leaders and in the interview sought to divorce himself from both the spill process and outcome, as though he wasn’t a participant in those rolling leadership ballots.

But what caught the attention of a numbers of viewers was his response to two questions.

The first response contained Morrison's assertion that he had separated climate/ environment and energy policies and admissions that he was removing climate change targets from future energy policy and was giving no guarantee of future funding for greenhouse gas emissions reduction.

The moment @ScottMorrisonMP condemned my great grandchildren to death. @abc730 #auspoll #climatechange pic.twitter.com/eKlhfEY7jc

— Fr Rod Bower (@FrBower) September 11, 2018

The second involved his belief that there was a need for additional legal protections of religious freedoms when none were being threatened....... 

Sales: "Can you give me an example at the moment where people's religious freedoms are being impinged?"

Morrison: "That's not the point. Australians want to be sure that in the future those things won't be"

oh dear #abc730

— Greg Jericho (@GrogsGamut) September 11, 2018

For Scott Morrison the primary fear of a majority of the Australian population is less important that demonstrating his missionary zeal to institutional Christianity and his unwavering support to the fossil fuel industry. 

Quote of the Week

“This country would throw itself in the sea if it wasn't already girt by it.”  [Freelance journalist Andrew Stafford’s 17 August 2018 tweeted response to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s removal of a climate change target from the National Energy Guarantee,

"sitting on the lap of the member for Warringah [Abbott] like a really scary wooden puppet come to life. With the hand of the member for Warringah up his... back. Like Chucky."  [Labor MP for Sydney & Deputy Leader of the Opposition Tanya Plibersek on the subject of Liberal MP for Dickson Peter Dutton, Twitter,  21 August 2018]

Anthropomorphic Global Warming in Australia 2018

Australians have been told repeatedly that global warming leading to climate change is real.

The continent is becomng dryer, record air and ground temperatures are no longer novel, heavy rain events are predicted to become more destructive, mass flora and fauna extinctions are expected and the coastline is beginning to erode faster than at the historical rate.

It's not just happenng in Australia, other continents are also experience climate change and, the one factor most have in common is generations of ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions produced by both households and industries in metropolitan, regional and rural areas.

Everyone bears some responsibility for where the world finds itself......

NDEVR Environmental:

In the first quarter of 2018 Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions will be over MT 7.3 CO₂-e  higher than the national Paris ERT commitment made on our behalf by the Australian Government.

Over one quarter of Australia’s CO₂-e budget for 2013 to 2050 has already been spent in the last 4.75 years.

AUSTRALIA’S ANNUAL EMISSIONS, CALENDAR YEAR TO SEPTEMBER 2017*

* This graph includes both published Government NGGI data and Ndevr Environmental projections for Q4/FY2017 and Q1/FY2018

BY  SECTOR 2005-2017

~~~~~~~~~~~

World-wide, land used for non-animal and animal-based agriculture in 2017 was estimated to produce 24% of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

In Australia agriculture was responsible for est. 85.03 CO2-eMt or about 16% of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2013:

66.3% from enteric fermentation in ruminant livestock (eructation and flatulence)

15.5% from agricultural soils

10.8% from prescribed burning of savannas

3.9% from manure management

2.4% from liming and urea application

and the remainder from rice cultivation and field burning of agricultural residues.

Total greenhouse gas emissions from world-wide food systems in 2012 contributed between 19% to 29% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. By 2030 the combined greenhouse gas emissions from global food production is expected to double.

~~~~~~~~~~~

National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting, Australia’s highest 10 greenhouse gas emitters 2016–17

Don't expect your residential electricity costs to come down anytime soon

In three years time the amount of revenue electricity network companies can charge customers will be reduced, which according to the Australian Energy Regulator in its Draft Rate of Return Guideline "could [not would] result in household customers’ bills decreasing by around $30 to $40 per year".

Remembering all the other failed assurances that the cost of residentail electricity would come down, it is a brave individual who takes this latest prediction at face value.

Australian Financial Review, 10 July 2018:

The Australian Energy Regulator has moved to significantly cut the amount of revenue electricity network companies can charge customers in a bid to take the pressure off households and businesses enduring high power prices.

AER chair Paula Conboy said it would reduce average household electricity bills by about $30 to $40 a year….

But energy network companies claim the new guidelines will strip about $2 billion in revenue over the next five years and threaten future investment in the energy sector.

Morgan Stanley said the rule, if confirmed, would cut valuations of listed grid owners such as Spark Infrastructure and Ausnet Services, while adding it "could have been worse".

Energy users welcomed the move as a sign the regulator is prioritising the interests of consumers although Energy Consumers of Australia acting head Lynne Gallagher said the proposed reduction in the rate of return able to be earned on capital could have been bigger.

"There is no doubt that there could be some disappointment from some consumer groups with this decision, but it is a much better outcome than we've seen in previous years on this issue," Ms Gallagher said....

AusNet said that if the rule is confirmed, the reductions would apply to its power distribution network from the beginning of 2021, in transmission from April 1 2022 and in gas from January 1 2023. Spark said the rule would apply to its various assets in 2020, 2021 and 2023….

Mr Turnbull is also expected to use his speech in Brisbane to talk on the long-awaited Australian Competition and Consumer Commission into electricity prices which is expected to be released this week. The ACCC report is expected to be used as a reason not to call a royal commission into electricity prices as being pushed by the Greens. 

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Restoring electricity affordability & Australia's competitive advantage, 11 July 2018, excerpts:

Australia is facing its most challenging time in electricity markets. High prices and bills have placed enormous strain on household budgets and business viability. The current situation is unacceptable and unsustainable. The approach to policy, regulatory design and promotion of competition in this sector has not worked well for consumers. Indeed, the National Energy Market (NEM) needs to be reset, and this report sets out a plan for doing this…….

There are many causes of the current problems in the electricity market. At all stages of the supply chain decisions have been made over many years by many governments that set the NEM on the wrong course.

In networks, the framework that governs regulation of monopoly infrastructure was loosened, leaving the regulator with limited ability to constrain excess spending by network owners. The limited merits review (LMR) regime allowed network owners to appeal regulatory decisions and recover billions of additional dollars from consumers. It led to significant increases in prices, has drawn out the length of time taken for revenue determinations, and has created significant uncertainty around network pricing. In addition, increased expenditure on networks was driven by reliability standards for some networks that were set too high, without due regard for consumers’ willingness to pay for marginal increases in reliability.

In generation, against ACCC advice, the Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) governments made decisions regarding the operation and ownership of generation assets giving rise to concentrated markets. In Queensland, the government consolidated the generation assets of three businesses into two. In NSW, as one example, both generators owned by Macquarie Generation were sold to AGL, missing an opportunity to deliver a competitive market structure by selling them to separate buyers.

Most state governments put in place excessively generous solar feed-in tariff schemes with a view to encouraging consumers to install solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Under these schemes, the subsidy paid to consumers for the energy produced by their systems outweighed, by many multiples, the value of that energy. Take up of the schemes exceeded all expectations, in part due to dramatic declines in solar PV installation costs. The substantial cost of the schemes continues to be spread across all electricity users.

The main enduring policy instrument for encouraging low-emissions electricity generation is the Renewable Energy Target. While it has been effective at encouraging wind and solar generation capacity installation, it has also distorted the investment that has occurred in the transition from higher carbon technologies to lower ones. The subsidies received for installing wind and solar made the business case for doing so compelling but did so in a way that was indifferent to the ability to provide energy to the market when demand requires it.

At a time when gas-powered generation has become more important with the exit of large coal-fired plants, the extent of LNG exports from the East Coast and government moratoria on on-shore gas exploration and development have stifled the availability of gas at a low price.

Electricity retailers have also played a major role in poor outcomes for consumers. Retailers have made pricing structures confusing and have developed a practice of discounting which is opaque and not comparable across the market. Standing offers are priced excessively to facilitate this practice, leaving inactive customers paying far more than they need to for electricity. Pay on time discounts, which have emerged as a response to attempts to constrain late payment fees, are excessive and punitive for those customers who fail to pay bills on time. [my yellow highlighting]

Coal needs to be consigned to the scrap book says former executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

These issues get reported in mainstream media but are falling on the deaf ears of monumentally ignorant Turnbull Government minsters, senator and MPs.

ABC News, 27 November 2017:

The woman who led the world to a global climate change agreement has a message for Australia: "You really do have to see that we are at the Kodak moment for coal."

Christiana Figueres, until last year the executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, doesn't mean happy snaps for the family album.

Rather, the decimation of the once dominant photographic company Kodak by digital change — in the same way that coal-fired power is being eclipsed by renewable energy.

She hopes to see coal, like those sentimental moments in time captured in photographs, confined to history — with the world remembering the contribution the fossil fuel has made to human development, while recognising the need to retire it as a fuel source because of its contribution to global warming.

And, she says, it's happening.

"The fact is that we are already seeing the decline of coal, we are seeing more and more countries phasing out of coal," Ms Figueres, who is based in London, told the ABC.

"We just had 25 countries come together [at the latest international climate change talks] in Bonn to say that they are moving out of coal in the short term.

"That does not include Australia or India or China, but you can begin to see the trend…..

Which makes arguments that India needs the coal from Adani's planned mega-mine in North Queensland — and the Federal Government's determination to see the mine ahead — baffling to Ms Figueres.

The Government's Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, or NAIF, is considering Adani's request for a subsidised loan of up to $1 billion to help it build a railway to connect the Carmichael mine in outback Queensland to the Abbot Point Coal Mine near Mackay, which Adani also owns.

By law, the NAIF is not permitted to make loans for projects that would damage Australia's international reputation.

Earlier this month, Ms Figueres wrote to the NAIF arguing that providing such a loan for a project that would significantly add to greenhouse gas emissions would do just that.

"I wrote to NAIF because I am very concerned about the fact that NAIF could still be considering giving a concessional loan to the Adani Group to allow them to extract profitably from the Carmichael coal mine and transport that coal all the way to the Abbot Point Coal Terminal," Ms Figueres said.

"First of all, it has huge environmental impacts. The more coal we burn, the further away we are going to be from the targets established in the Paris agreement [to keep atmospheric temperature rises well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels].

"But also, the more coal we burn around the world, independently of where it is going to be burned, the more negatively we are affecting public health.

"Now we have this issue of the Carmichael coal mine which, if it goes ahead, would frankly blow completely out of the water any emissions reductions that Australia has committed to.

Quotes of the Week

“Tens of millions of dollars are spent annually on political lobbying for the interests of the fossil fuel sector. That investment serves the interests of a small amount of company shareholders in keeping a legacy industry alive, despite the availability of newer, clean technologies, at lower cost. In the wake of these behind-the-scenes policy negotiations, the real and present impacts of climate change, such as bushfires, coastal flooding and reduced crop yields are left at the door of future generations to deal with.” [Professor Tim Flannery writing in The Guardian, 13 September 2017]

“The main problem bedevilling Australia’s energy sector at the moment is a lack of settled policy to define the investment framework. It means companies like AGL have to guess what regulations they will face in the future.” [Journalist Katherine Murphy writing in The Guardian, 12 September 2017]

“Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime. His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period." [ESPN SportsCenter cohost Jemele Hill tweeting about US President Donald Trump on 11 September 2017]

This is what privatisation did to Australia's household electricity bills

When three eastern and one southern state formed the National Electricity Market in December 1998 Australia had the lowest retail prices in the world along with the United States and Canada.

The rules which underpin this National Electricity Market are created by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) set up by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) - through the COAG Energy Council - for that purpose and to advise federal & state governments on how best to develop energy markets over time.

The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) sets the amount of revenue that network businesses can recover from customers for using networks (electricity poles and wires and gas pipelines) that transport energy.

So far so good. There's a defined market and there are rules.

Then the privatisation of electricity supply and infrastructure began in earnest.

It should come as no surprise that this push towards full privatisation, with its downhill spiral in service delivery and uphill climb in cost to retail customers, began and was progressed during the term of Liberal Prime Minister John Howard.

By 2017 the NSW Berejiklian Coalition Government has almost completed its three-stage privatisation of state power infrastructure by selling off poles and wires and, it goes without saying that the retail cost of electricity is expected to rise again next year.

This is where we stand today……………………

[Graphs in Financial Review, 4 August 2017]

The Financial Review, 4 Augut 2017:

The annual cost to households of accepting a standing offer from one of the big three retailers instead of the best offer in the market has been estimated at $830 in Victoria, $900 in Queensland and $1400-$1500 in NSW and SA by the St Vincent de Paul Society.

Mr Mountain said power bills are constructed in such a complex way that ordinary customers without sophisticated spreadsheet and analytical skills have little hope of analysing competing offers to work out which offers them the best deal.

Private comparison websites do not include all market offers and charge retailers for switching customers, while the websites offered by the Australian Energy Regulator and the Victorian government do not provide the tools customers need to discriminate among offers.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has ordered the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to conduct an inquiry into electricity supply, costs and pricing, including retail pricing.

The Treasurer should have a preliminary report from the ACCC in his hands by the end of September this year, however this body does not submit a final report until 30 June 2018 with no guarantee that any recommendations will be adopted by government and industry.

Quite frankly, it appears the privatisation train left the platform some time ago and there is no way to halt or divert it in order to genuinely benefit household consumers.

Is the Turnbull Government trying to hide ramifications of the Abbott Government's clean energy blunder?

On 20 March 2014 the Abbott Liberal-Nationals Coalition Government’s Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal) Act 2014 was passed by both houses of the Australian Parliament amid scenes of ministerial jubilation in the House of Representatives and became law on 17 July 2014.

Since then it appears that this ideologically driven move away from squarely facing the fact of climate change has seen Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions begin to rise once more, along with sharply rising energy costs to consumers.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 December 2016

Until it now seems the Turnbull Liberal-Nationals Coalition Government may be actively attempting to hide the increasingly bad news from the national electorate on whose behalf it purports to govern.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 July 2017:

The federal government has been keeping almost a year's worth of pollution data secret, despite it being scheduled for release in May, documents obtained under freedom of information laws reveal.

Independent estimates suggest Australia's greenhouse gas emissions have risen sharply since the government last released its quarterly data in December – a trend that would make the nation's commitment to cutting emissions more disruptive and expensive.

Quarterly updates by the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, described as "up-to-date information on emissions trends for business, policymakers and the public", have been released 28 times since 2009, but not since last year.

Documents obtained under FOI by the Australian Conservation Foundation reveal that while the government possesses data on greenhouse pollution for the two quarters leading up to the end of last year, it has failed to release them……

According to estimates by consultant NDEVR Environmental, Australia's overall emissions increased by 1.15 per cent in the first quarter of this year, while electricity sector emissions increased by 11 per cent.

The overall emissions increase is equivalent to an extra 2,308,846 cars on the road.

According to NDEVR Environmental, the increase is almost entirely attributable to electricity emissions, while other sectors such as transport emissions decreased over the quarter……

UPDATE

Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts, Quarterly Update of Australia's NationalGreenhouse Gas Inventory: December 2016 (incorporating the Quarterly Update:September 2016 quarter,released late Friday, 7 July 2017:

“For the December quarter 2016, national emissions levels, excluding the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector, have increased 0.4 per cent relative to the previous quarter on a seasonally adjusted and weather normalised basis. For the year to December 2016, emissions increased 1.4 per cent on the previous year.”