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| Since 1960 the average GNP growth is 3.2% pa, with both parties performing roughly the same |
On the whole, No. It doesn't matter.
As I said here, Australian elections hardly influence the way Australia goes. Go back to 1960 and up to today, 60-plus years. Let's look at GNP growth as a simple (if simplistic) measure of how a country is doing.
When the Labor Party (the "progressives") were in power they averaged 3.1% GNP growth.
When the Liberal Party (the "conservatives") were in power they averaged 3.2% GNP growth.
That's not a statistically significant difference.
Each party offered this or that. Tweaks and twiddles. They tweaked tax rates and retirement funds. They twiddled health policy and public housing. But overall, they did about the same. Their foreign policy was usually bipartisan.
So, overall, no, no really difference, and any one election doesn't really matter.
But the most recent election did matter more than most for one reason: Energy policy.
The Labor Party: All-in on renewables. Wants zero to do with Nuclear. Aiming for "Net Zero" carbon emissions.
The Liberal Party: Fine with renewables, but also wants to include Nuclear energy, currently illegal (!) in Australia.
The Labor Party was disgraceful the way it smeared Nuclear. They put out childish memes with three-eyed koalas and other fear-mongering nonsense.
But the Liberal Party didn't present a good case for nuclear either. They were coy about the costs, when they could have simply said: "they'll be around 10 billion per installed Gigawatt".
And they suggested we could roll out reactors quickly, when they should have been more cautious, pushing for first of all a repeal of the stupid laws that literally ban nuclear energy in Australia. This makes no sense. Australia is the only country in the world that bans civil nuclear energy, and yet we're one of the biggest exporters of uranium for nuclear power, which at the very least makes us a big time hypocrite.
Let's not forget that there are 450 reactors around the world, that nuclear countries are saying they're going to ramp up new reactors and that there are dozens of countries who are planning to do so. The IPCC says we need to increase nuclear power five fold.
Just us Aussies that are scared of nuclear power. Weird, weird.
[Despite the fact that an Aussie icon, Australian of the Year, entrepreneur and environmentalist, Dick Smith, is patron of Nuclear for Australia.]
The scaremongering of the Labor Party was echoed by the Australian Conservation Foundation, that I've been a member of since 1969 to today. The ACF also ran a scare campaign along the lines of "nuclear is dirty, dangerous and expensive". It is none of those things. The Labor Party and the ACF are both guilty of monster "misinformation" that they claim they're so worried about in the public sphere.
By the way, we here in Hong Kong, our household has 20 kW of solar panels on our roof. This is Feed in Tariff power we "sell" to the grid. Our grid electricity, from Hong Kong's China Light and Power is nuclear, from the Daya Bay Nuclear power station about 20 miles to our north east.
So we are both nuclear and solar. Let no one say we're hypocrites!
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| Our house in Discovery Bay. Rooftop is 20kW of FiT solar. Grid power is nuclear, from Daya Bay |
Hong Kong has about one quarter the per capita carbon emissions as Australia at 3T/capita/year vs 12T/capita/year for Australia. We here in Hong Kong achieved this level -- one that Australia is struggling to get to by 2030 -- many years ago, by a combination of nuclear and natural gas. Australia is struggling with getting its carbon emission number down, despite committing billions to renewables. Which have only led to more expensive electricity with lower reliability. Because they're All-in with renewables and insist on No Nuclear and No Natural gas.
And that's why the last election mattered. Growth is all about energy. I fear Australia is down a path to penury, not to energy affordability and security. (As a side note: expensive electricity is extremely regressive, as it affects the working class far more than it does the laptop class of pollies and journos).
To me, the last election went the wrong way. Because the Labor Party is going to continue with its Net Zero mania, with its anti-nuclear mania, with its anti-gas mania. Even though a big part of the blame I can put on the Liberals, for an incompetent campaign.
I'll bet that in ten years Australian carbon emissions will still not at the level of carbon emissions per capita that we are here in Hong Kong.
Anyone willing to take on that bet?
