
31 May 2023
It’s Time To Concentrate On Keeping The Lights On
With the recent closure of the Liddell Power Station, our leaders must realise it is time to hit the pause button on our headlong rush towards reliance on greater renewable energy. As occurred when the Hazelwood Power Station closed in Victoria, the removal of 10 per cent of the power supply of NSW can only mean a greater risk of

30 May 2023
Liddell The Line In The Sand
With the recent closure of Liddell Power Station, the electricity system is on a knife’s edge. It is time for energy policy makers to take stock – and focus on energy security – before it is too late. Australia can continue down the path of closing what have been reliable low-cost baseload power stations without adequate replacements being available. Or

30 May 2023
New South Wales Vital To Keeping Australia’s Light’s On
“The closure of the Liddell Power Station has placed Australia’s energy generation network on the brink. Today the challenge is clear, no more affordable and reliable energy can be safely removed from the grid,” said Scott Hargreaves, Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs. In a landmark report on Australia’s energy security, Liddell the Line in the Sand, the

26 May 2023
Bureau Capitulates: But Overseas Model Unlikely to Solve All Temperature Measurement Issues
It has only taken ten years, that is how long a few of us have been detailing major problems with how the Australian Bureau of Meteorology measures daily temperatures. Now, I’m informed, the Bureau are ditching the current system and looking to adopt an overseas model that it claims will be more reliable. There will be no media release. There

25 May 2023
Latest Default Market Offers Confirm Net Zero’s Cost
“The astronomical rise in Default Market Offers is a direct result of net zero policies that hit Australian households hard, as unreliable renewables continue to push reliable and affordable baseload power generation off the grid,” said Saxon Davidson, Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. Today, the Essential Services Commission announced Victorian residential customers will see household bills rise

23 May 2023
Coral Snapshot 2022-23, & All the Unanswered Questions
Full marks to David Mills, writing in the Courier Mail, for asking why the government tends to bury good news reports about the Great Barrier Reef. There are a few other questions that I would like answered. Key government ministers, marine scientists, and climate scientists have been unable to acknowledge: Q1. Overall coral cover has been increasing since at least

12 May 2023
Submission to the Select Committee on Cost of Living
Dear Committee Secretary, The purpose of this letter is to share research and analysis conducted by the Institute of Public Affairs (“the IPA”) with the Select Committee on Cost of Living (“the committee”). The findings contained in this submission are based on wide-ranging analysis published in numerous IPA research reports over the past 12 months regarding issues relevant to the

2 May 2023
BOM Makes Heavy Weather Over Temperature Data
My request three years ago to obtain temperature data from the Bureau of Meteorology should have been a straightforward process, but what I encountered was a determination to obstruct and obfuscate. The recent saga – sparked by that Freedom of Information request and Graham Lloyd’s report in The Australian last month – illustrates deficiencies in the system. In practice, it

1 May 2023
BOM Can’t Dodge Differences In Temperature Data
Since Graham Lloyd’s article, Mercury rising in Bureau of Meteorology probe row, was published on the front page of The Weekend Australian earlier this month, there has been some confusion regarding the availability of parallel temperature data. These are the temperatures handwritten into the field books of meteorological observations, both the temperatures as recorded by a mercury thermometer, and from the

26 April 2023
Albanese Is Making Life Harder For Mainstream Australians
While Australians were ensconced in the Easter long weekend, the Albanese government announced that would not be extending the low- and middle-income tax offset (LMITO) in the upcoming budget. LMITO was stage one in a three-phase tax reduction plan legislated by the previous government. This revelation should not come as a surprise as the current policy agenda of the federal