At the same time, the country has an energy crisis “because we stupidly are going down” the pathto renewables.
“We can’t burn coal, but every single thing we’re digging out of the ground is being burned by China, or is being burned by Japan,” he said.
“It’s all being shipped overseas and burned. We’re deluding ourselves by thinking that we are doing anything by not burning it here.”
Meanwhile, Australia is one of the world’s top three exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) alongside the US and Qatar, but now faces whatindustry bosseshave branded the “bizarre” prospect of being forced to import gas from overseas in the face of skyrocketing energy bills.
“Now we’re actually going to import gas in the eastern seaboard, which is ludicrous, because we don’t have a gas reservation scheme,” Mr Barrie said.
“So we have a cost-of-living crisis caused by input costs. We have an energy crisis through very poor energy policy where we’ll export all the raw materials to build renewable generators, which are energy negative on the energy that’s consumed to get the materials out of the ground, which ship back to us and are unreliable. As a result, we can’t run a reliable manufacturing industry in this country.”
He noted manufacturing as a percentage of GDP in Australia had fallen from as high as 19 per cent to 5.39 per cent, “which is on par with Botswana, where you go see cheetahs, it’s on par with Liechtenstein, which is a financial haven”.
“It’s about one third of the OECD average,” he said.
“Literally, this country is going to hell on a hand basket. We are 93rd in the Harvard Economic Complexity index in terms ofthe complexityof things that we produce, how sophisticated they are, and how much people can replicate them. Our economy in terms of sophistication and complexity is on par with Equatorial Guinea, where they don’t have a cinema in the entire country.”
He concluded, “It is all being caused by government policy, which can be turned around on a dime.”
LINK
