Hi All
Whilst we hope our WA spotters will be watching a massive flare at W7, I fear 'the market's' eyes will be averted towards Canberra, where Labor has been forced to deal with the 'No Gas Greens' for passage of $13.7 billion of tax credits embedded in its clean energy bill.
Why the Greens? Ironically, because the Coalition - the self-professed 'party of business' - said no to a Made In Australia package that would result in the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs in critical minerals and value-add manufacturing. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, since this is the same party that scuttled Australia's car industry at the cost of 250,000 jobs and the curation of the skills associated with it.
So poor old Jim Chalmers heads off, cap in hand, to plead with Adam Bandt and his motley crew to back the prime-pumping of the renewable energy sector. And here, my friends, is where the greatest irony might yet occur. The Greens want an immediate - as in immediate - ban on any new coal or gas project - WE or Ocean Hill anyone? - and now get an opportunity to walk their talk by demanding the Government kow tow to their demands in order to pass its flagship policy.
Before you leap to the assumption that common sense will prevail and Bandt will see the necessity of gas as a transitional fuel, cast your mind back to 2009 when the Greens torpedoed the Rudd Government's carbon price plan because in their view it did not go hard enough. The results are still being felt today, when the lack of a carbon price gives green industries little confidence to invest the billions of dollars required for the transition to renewables. History, then, suggests the Greens are entirely capable of thwarting Chalmers' attempt to fill that investment gap - a gap, of course, created by the Greens.
The ironies pile higher. If the Greens do pull the plug on Labor, one presumes the outcome will be the status quo and the gas and coal industries will plough ahead, and that, folks, would be the greatest irony of all for Strike and its investors.
Sure, be nervous about the outcome at W7, but be even more nervous about the outcome in Canberra.
OOO
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