Yes, it is good to see industry hitting back. Unfortunately,...

Yes, it is good to see industry hitting back. Unfortunately, they have waited until they had to react rather than get out there, on the front foot, and SELL the message.

Also, the Federal Government have allowed the Greens to push this 'straight to 100% renewables' mantra. Because the Federal Government avoids talking about the role of gas. They show images of solar and wind farms and of geothermals in all their marketing. All very misleading, when a $23/tonne price on carbon does nothing to make these industries economic in their own right.

The Government should have been very upfront and honest about a few key facts about this Carbon Tax:

- that the purpose of the Carbon Tax is to allow for the migration from coal-fired power to gas-fired power, and that is the primary way emissions will be reduced. No coal-to-gas migration means no big carbon emissions reductions.

- $23/tonne, or even $26/tonne, does NOT make solar and wind and other renweables economically viable. Even $40/tonne doesn't either.

- The pricing levels of the carbon tax accepts the facts that, currently, renewables cannot replace coal-fired power. Renweables are not financially viable, nor technically feasible, for baseload power.

- That we accept the fact that gas is a 'transtion fuel'.

- We also accept that, as the East Coast has large amounts of coal-seam gas, and not much conventional gas, so coal-seam gas will become the primary source of gas for East Coast power (that is, for most of Australia's population). And if we don't accept the use of coal-seam gas, then we must accept the continuation of the burning of coal.

- That the Government is offering publicly funded research funding into renewables - $10 billion worth. But note that this is RESEARCH - ie, science to try to advance renewable technologies such that they BECOME economic alternatives to coal and gas. Because currently, they are not economically and technically viable and require large amounts of public subsidies to exist at all. And if they were viable, we wouldn't need the research! And if they WERE viable, then the private sector would be building them already, without subsidies!

These are the hard facts and questions that industry and the Government need to be putting to the Greens. The Government and/or industry really should be challenging the Greens to a public debate about energy policy. Let Mar'n Ferguson or David Knox or Grant King have a debate with Bob Brown or Christine Milne about coal, gas, renewables. And let the truth come out.

Yaq