Mentions Anthony Albanese

Clearly co-written by the gas sector, the document even freely admits world destroying temperature increases of 2.5 degrees are on the cards. Which, to be fair, is important because that’s what the policy is entirely consistent with.

The strategy runs to more than 230 pages, but the upshot is the handful of mostly foreign fossil fuel giants that have for decades been robbing our nation blind have been given the official greenlight to continue doing so indefinitely — “to 2050 and beyond”, no less.

Released under resources minister Madeleine King it opens the nation up to wholesale new gas fields. That’s despite the International Energy Agency (and many others) repeatedly warning new oil and gas projects are incompatible with keeping global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees.

At this juncture it’s worth remembering that every single resources minister of the past 20 years has gone on to work for fossil fuels companies. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government says the move is needed to shore up domestic energy supply while supporting a transition to net zero.

But critics argue the move is a rejection of science, pointing to the International Energy Agency (IEA) call for "huge declines in the use of coal, oil and gas" to reach climate targets.

Australia - one of the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas - has also said the policy is based on "its commitment to being a reliable trading partner".

Released on Thursday, the strategy outlines the government's plans to work with industry and state leaders to increase both the production and exploration of the fossil fuel.

The government will also continue to support the expansion of the country's existing gas projects, the largest of which are run by Chevron and Woodside Energy Group in Western Australia. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The Albanese government is supercharging its push to break China’s stranglehold on global critical minerals supply with an $840 million package of loans and grants to help Gina Rinehart-backed Arafura Rare Earths develop its Northern Territory mine and refinery.

The support is Labor’s biggest single financial commitment for the critical minerals sector and effectively expands federal taxpayers’ exposure to rare earths mining and processing by more than 50 per cent to well over $2 billion.

 After decades in which macroeconomic policy focused primarily on inflation, the announcement of a renewed commitment to full employment, made by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in 2021, was a major step. Labour’s election campaign included not only a commitment to full employment but the promise of a Jobs Summit leading to a new White Paper on Full Employment, modelled on that of 1945.

Upon taking office, the Labor Government backed away from this commitment. The Jobs Summit was relabelled a ‘Jobs and Skills Summit’ and much of the discussion focused on supposed skills shortages. This was a misnomer. The problem faced by employers was not a shortage of particular skills but the difficulty of filling vacancies of any kind in a situation of full or near-full employment. After decades in which the number of unemployed workers routinely exceeded vacancies, employers found this situation difficult to accept.

An even more consequential change was the removal of the word ‘Full’ from the name of the proposed White Paper. The decision to break with Labor’s history on this crucial issue seemed to portend the abandonment of the entire process.

It’s not just that renters are in the minority – some minorities have real power – but the nation’s attitude to housing is deeply ambivalent and well hidden. There has been, and still is, a public dialogue about the problem of housing affordability and plenty of sympathy expressed for the disenfranchised, but the majority who own a house are quietly happy with their high prices, and economists and businesspeople approve of the economic “wealth effect”. Also, the minority who don’t own a house talk about the property ladder and the need to get on it. The idea of housing as the main, if not the only, form of real wealth creation for ordinary people is deeply embedded in the national psyche. Superannuation is starting to rival it but is still a long way behind.

That means doing something about it requires true political leadership – that is, doing something right that’s unpopular. Study after study on the subject has concluded that the high price of housing is leading to dangerous inequality and distorting the economy and society, yet political leaders have never tackled it effectively, for obvious reasons.

The fact that one of the three least-populated countries on earth contains the world’s second-most expensive housing is a national calamity and a stunning failure of public policy. For decades, political leaders have paid lip service to housing affordability, while doing nothing that would bring prices down. In fact, most of the big political decisions have done the opposite.