THE R.E.T : TAKING FROM THE POOR TO GIVE TO THE RICH - TO MAKE THE GREENS FEEL GOOD. History will record the RET as one if the most foolish wealth destroying government schemes ever. As the ever insightful Nick Cater writes in todays The Australian .... Wind farms may be ugly but they are certainly not cheap, nor is the electricity that trickles from them. No one in their right minds would buy one if they had to sell power for $30 to $40 a megawatt hour, the going rate for conventional producers. But since the retailers are forced to buy a proportion of renewable power, the windmill mafia can charge two to three times that price, a practice that in any other market would be known as price gouging. It’s a mouth-watering prospect for the merchant bankers and venture capitalists who were smart enough to jump on board, and brilliant news for Mercedes dealerships on the lower north shore, but of little or any benefit to the planet. The cost of this speculative financial picnic will be about $17 billion by 2030 or thereabouts, according to Deloitte, which produced a report on the messy business last week. Since the extra cost will be added to electricity bills, the RET is a carbon tax by another name, a regressive impost that will fall most heavily on those with limited incomes, such as pensioners. The lowest income households already spend 7 per cent of their disposable incomes on energy, according to the Australian Council of Social Service. Energy takes just 2.6 per cent of the budget of those on high incomes. Thus under the cover of responding to climate change — “the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time” — billions of dollars are taken from the poor and given to the rich investors in the unsightly industrial turbines that are blighting the lives of rural communities and stripping value from the properties of people who just wish to be left to live in peace. If the anti-Abbott budget bashers who are squealing about a minor adjustment to pension indexation were serious, they would demand the end of the RET’s iniquitous transfer of wealth. Yet ironically they find themselves on the side of crafty merchant bankers in the romantic expectation that this complex financial ruse is doing something to assist the planet.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 13:26:47 +0000
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