Letter to The Editor - Planned Power Chaos

To ON TARGET          Seven Australian governments have made a mis-planned mess of Australia’s electricity industry. The federal government now plans to add more toxins to the mess – “five-year targets to cut emissions.”

     There was one big lesson from the 20th Century – coercive central planning always fails - it constantly destroys economic assets and human freedom. Just look at the human and economic costs of the grand plans of Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Or compare East and West Germany when the Berlin Wall came down or North and South Korea now.

     The International Tin Council almost destroyed the tin industry. Australia’s failed Wool Board delivered unearned profits to our overseas competitors and wool growers took years to clear up the mess. Australia has had egg boards, milk boards and grain boards and all produced sinecures for board members, reduced markets for producers and higher prices for consumers.

     Even OPEC’s grand plan to maintain high prices for crude oil were destroyed by American shale oil entrepreneurs. Outcomes are always better when markets reflect the wishes and actions of consumers and producers and are free of selective subsidies, discriminatory taxes and interfering politicians.

     Australia’s electricity market is jerked in one direction by a Climate Commissar in Canberra who is second-guessed by state premiers who wanna-be power engineers. Rules change with every election. The result is high-priced electricity from an unreliable grid.

     The winners are bureaucrats and academics who are well paid to dream up the “plans” and speculators quick enough to grab the sure-fire benefits. The losers are real industry, electricity consumers and tax payers. No more five-year power plans thanks.

     Politicians who subsidise some technologies and tax or ban others will never get it right. Let coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar compete freely with no government subsidies or market mandates and no guaranteed return on investment - just a few reasonable regulations to prevent real pollution and protect public safety.

     Finally, cease all official promotion of the myth of man-made global warming.
  Viv Forbes, Washpool, Qld