by Viv Forbes, winner of the 1986 Australian Adam Smith Award for “outstanding services to the free society”
and Chairman of The Carbon Sense Coalition

That serial alarmist, Professor Flannery, says “Solar and wind could be the cheapest form of power by 2030, if not earlier, as carbon prices [he means taxes] rise.”

That is like me saying that I could beat Roger Federer at tennis as long as he is forced to use a cricket bat instead of a tennis racquet. Or I could outrun Cathy Freeman as long as she has her shoe laces tied together by race officials.

Demolition is easy. Any industry can be destroyed by taxing it to death while subsidising its competitors. So the Flannery Plan can be made to work as fast as he likes.

But cheap reliable coal-fired electricity will not die alone. Consumers will suffer greatly, big industrial users will migrate, asset values will be destroyed and real jobs will disappear.

The Flannery Plan will enrich green power speculators and foreign manufacturers, and create regiments of paper jobs in the law, the bureaucracy and academia.

The global climate will be unaffected.