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Finkel, a PM, Adani and the future of coal
Volume 32 #01
June 14, 2017
The done deal with one last check box With the development application (DA) for 290 residential lots for West Byron now on public exhibition, The Echo asks: ‘What’s the point of asking the public when the government and developers have foisted this onto the community?’ Over many years there has been community concern about developing the large parcel of land opposite the industrial estate on Ewingsdale Road. Apart from environmental aspects, there are concerns that such a development would add more traffic to an already overburdened road. Additionally it’s unlikely the cost for the lots – most of which will be around 450m2 – would be considered affordable: there is no legal requirement. And building on a floodplain reflects greed rather than sound planning practice; there are more suitable areas for housing. But progress must occur at any cost we are told, and the state government has bent over backwards to make this happen on behalf of developers Terry Agnew and QLD-based Villa World. As reported previously, Villa World told The Echo that owing to being unsure of a determination timeline, they had circumvented the development control plan (DCP). As a planning instrument, a DCP provides the community some limited say in how West Byron would proceed. Additionally, NSW planning minister Anthony Roberts (Liberal) threatened Council in April he would personally intervene unless a DCP for West Byron was produced to his liking – and timing. And just recently, the planning department intervened to amend another planning instrument – the local environment plan (LEP) – to allow this development to occur. While Byron Shire Council say they are the consent authority for the project, the Northern Region Joint Planning Panel (JRPP) ‘has the function of determining the application due to the cost of construction being in excess of $20m.’ The JRPP have an almost 100 per cent approval rate across the state and the northern region panel is headed by former Nationals MP Garry West. He was recently criticised by the courts over his botched report arguing for council amalgamations on behalf of his coalition government. While the developers have ignored the process of a community-led DCP, Council staff say the peer reviews of the West Byron DCP will be tabled at the June 22 meeting. Whether councillors will hold their ground against a demented Liberal planning minister and his army of pro-developer bureaucrats remains to be seen; unfortunatley the Greens majority botched the recent Bruns Parks negotiations. It’s worth taking the time to state your opinion on one of the largest developments Byron will see in a generation. The DA is available on Council’s webiste: http://bit.ly/2taUKg2. Hans Lovejoy, editor News tips are welcome: editor@echo.net.au
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alcolm Turnbull likes to describe himself as a technology agnostic. As with many of his other utterances, this is not to be taken literally; our prime minister is not wrestling with the problem of whether technology actually exists or not. After all, Turnbull is the master of innovation; Tony Abbott once said that he practically invented the NBN, although perhaps we had better not go into that right now. What Turnbull is presumably saying that he is unconcerned about what kind of technology he employs, particularly when it comes to energy generation. Coal, gas, oil, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro – even parliamentary bluster if nothing else suffices. It is all the same to him as long as it works, by which he means as long as it is acceptable to the party room. It has little if anything to do with the real issues around climate change: it is all about satisfying Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, George Christensen and Eric Abetz. For this reason Turnbull also refers to his insistence that the debate must be technologically neutral, which is seriously misleading. Energy generation is not about taking the engine out of gear and letting it coast along as far as it will go; it is about choice, about looking for the most efficient solution. But of course this involves making very sure that the question can be defined in a way that entails its own answer, which is what Turnbull did. He asked the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, to look for ways to make energy cheap and reliable – and, as almost an afterthought, to control emissions within clear limitations. Finkel, acutely aware of the politics of his brief, could not even consider what his fellow
scientists and economists all but unanimously agree would be the best result: a price on carbon, preferably morphing into an emission trading scheme, giving security to investors and mandating a swift and orderly transition away from fossils to renewables. He was forced to opt for second, or even third, best: a socalled Clean Energy Target that continues to offer carrots rather than sticks to polluters, a pious hope that electricity prices can be reduced and a hospital pass to Turnbull and his colleagues, leaving it to them to decide just what the target should be and how – or perhaps if – it can be realised.
tax. Thus any olive branch from Bill Shorten must be rejected, and if that involves tossing Finkel under a bus in the process, well, tough. And so he has hoisted his battle flag, with its heraldic arms emblazoned by a shining lump of coal. In spite of Scott Morrison’s bizarre appearance in parliament a couple of months ago, not all Liberals are active coal fetishists. Most, indeed, can probably take it or leave it and the heavy users can, presumably, be weaned away from it – perhaps they can be persuaded to embrace other forms of carbon, like graphite, or better still diamonds.
QLD Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk clearly believes that there will be, sometime, somewhere, a pot of coal at the end of the Adani rainbow. by Mungo MacCallum Finkel, like Turnbull, says he wants to get rid of the ideology around the decade-long quarrel; perhaps he is being ironic. Climate change is about science, not ideology; the best minds on the subject agree that man-made emissions, especially of carbon dioxide, are having a measurable effect, overall global warming is increasing and as a result extreme weather events will become increasingly more common and more severe. The ideologues are those who either choose to deny the science, or, even less forgivably, regard their own self-interest as more important than that of the planet. Step forward Tony Abbott, who sometimes regards the science as crap and at other times not, but in any case sees it as irrelevant. To settle the issue would prevent him from getting into another good stoush, the fading memory of his triumphant mud wrestle against Labor’s carbon
But coal has become a symbol – an ideology, if you like. It can be used as a casus belli against Labor and that is all that really matters. Finkel, understanding their obsession, has offered them an out – longer life for coal-fired power stations and even the prospect of building new or refurbished ones, if anyone silly enough to invest in such anachronisms can be found. To Labor, the Greens, and probably the majority of the electorate, this is not acceptable; it is fair enough to allow a reasonable time for coal to be phased out, but the idea of encouraging, even subsidising, new coal as part of the energy mix of the future is perverse. Which leads us, inevitably, to Adani. Adani is not yet a coal mine; indeed many good judges believe it will never be a coal mine, despite all the ballyhoo about its founding chairman Gautam Adani signing off on the project. It has been clear for some time
that the economics of Adani are, at best, rubbery, that the claims of jobs are absurdly exaggerated and the actual returns – financial, environmental and social – for Australia are more likely to be a net negative than the bonanza being trumpeted. Only the gullible and desperate have fallen for the hype: QLD Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk clearly believes that there will be, sometime, somewhere, a pot of coal at the end of the Adani rainbow. But even she admits that it will not happen soon; in the meantime she is handing out the prospect of a royalty holiday for Adani (the proceeds of which will presumably end up in the family vaults in the Cayman Islands) and ramping up the pressure for Turnbull to give a billion-dollar loan to the company to build a railway to transport its products to the Great Barrier Reef. It is not certain that this cosy little arrangement is part of the deal Adani signed last week, but what the hell – federal Labor is largely against it, so it makes a great wedge issue, a definite strike in the ideological war Abbott and his colleagues are determined to pursue. And they will take any allies they can get: Clive James is an accomplished poet and a brilliantly successful entertainer, but as he boasts, he knows bugger all about science, let alone the complexities of climate change. Nonetheless, last week he let fly in The Australian with a barely coherent diatribe like a more literate version of the deranged One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts – and the right-wing ideologues lapped it up. James’s last major work was a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy – a medieval fantasy about good and evil, entirely appropriate as a manifesto for the Mad Monk Tony Abbott and his band of crusaders.
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