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Just get out of our way

The Turnbull Government’s position on the NEG changed as quickly as we changed Prime Ministers this week.

It was only last week that the former PM and his Energy Minister now Deputy PM Josh Frydenberg were gloating about the NEG and how it had the full support of the party room.

But over the last 48 hours the NEG is dead in the water, Turnbull has resigned and Scott Morrison is the new Prime Minister. So where to from here?

It appeared that Turnbull had the party room votes to get the policy over the line but Tony Abbott and his coal loving crew ensured that it was never going to happen and as Mr Turnbull observed in his farewell speech:

“I think the truth is that the coalition finds it very hard to get agreement on anything to do with emissions.

“Emissions policy and climate policy issues have the same problem within the coalition of bitterly entrenched views that are actually more ideological views than based on engineering and economics.”

It’s becoming very clear to the energy and renewables sector (and the Australian public) that the Federal Government doesn’t like emission reductions, investments in renewables and an energy market that provides competition for consumers on price.

Last year ScoMo bought a lump of coal into parliament and told us all not to be afraid but the thing is we are afraid.

We are afraid that Australia will continue this trend of inept politicians putting their ideology before the good of the country. We are afraid that we will continue to have exceedingly high energy prices and we are afraid that we will have a renewables sector that has little confidence and investment.

But as we head towards the weekend with a new PM, we reflect on the words uttered by a delegate at the recent All-Energy Summit in Sydney…”you can debate policy all you like but just get out of our way because renewables are happening whether you like it or not.”

This image was sourced from Shutterstock cc: FiledIMAGE

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