In this interview Saxon Davidson appeared on Sharri – Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research on net zero.
All media posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Sharri Markson:
Welcome back. And joining me now the Institute of Public Affairs Research Fellow Saxon Davidson. Great to see you Saxon. And now James Willis in The Daily Telegraph reports today that farmers are being offered $50,000 per year to live near wind farms.
Saxon, what are the ethics of payments like this as there are these tensions emerging over land?
Saxon Davidson:
It’s completely unethical in my opinion. These types of bribes, all they seek to do is sow division in regional communities. And this is something with the IPA have witnessed when we’ve done our regional tours throughout regional Australia into the communities that are most affected by these wind and solar factories and transmission lines. All these payments do is seek to divide people into groups of people who don’t mind being paid to live near these wind factories and people who do very much mind. And this really affects regional Australia hard because regional Australians rely and know their neighbours a lot more than what people in the inner city do.
Sharri Markson:
Yeah, it’s a tricky one, isn’t it? And especially because farmers have been doing it so tough. Some might be thinking they have no option but to accept that sort of payment. I just want to ask you about how some of the green energy companies are blowing out their budgets on some of the projects. In particular, the state’s Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone, it’s now forecast to cost more than $5.5 billion. Saxon, the original projection was $650 million and you’d expect, what, taxpayers and electricity customers will be footing the bill for this?
Saxon Davidson:
Oh, you can only expect so. The renewable and net-zero industry is the biggest example of crony capitalism here in Australia, in which the cost of all of it is socialised via higher power bills and massive amounts of subsidies and tax breaks and loopholes and which the benefits of it are highly privatised to the benefit of a select few billionaires who are invested into renewable energy and the net-zero transition. And it’s completely unethical in my opinion, considering that we as Australians, as I said before, will pay through it through our tax dollars, but also our power bills will just continue to go up and up as they have ever since the mass expansion of renewables we’ve seen over the past decade or so.
Sharri Markson:
Can you tell us about the research your organisation, the IPA, did into how many jobs might be at risk by net-zero?
Saxon Davidson:
Of course. So there are about 630,000 jobs, direct jobs at risk due to the policy of net-zero by 2050, and 16 of the 20 most affected electorates by the jobs lost to net-zero are held by the coalition and only 1 of the least 20 affected seats are held by the coalition. This paper is an update to one we did in 2021, in which the most affected seats held by coalition members has remained stagnant in the past four years since the coalition adopted the policy. But the number of seats held by the coalition in which they’re least affected has dropped from 12 in 2021 to 1 in 2025. Which refutes the myth-
Sharri Markson:
But can I just quickly ask, what sort of jobs are these mostly that you Project will be lost because of net-zero.?
Saxon Davidson:
These are jobs in mining, manufacturing, agriculture in part of the electricity market. These are jobs which are directly affected and are directly impacted by emission reduction mandates through high emission industries in high emission projects from coal mines to coal stations to gas projects, to iron ore, nickel, copper, rare earths critical minerals. These are in jobs in a wider age of industries and this projection is actually under-counted because it doesn’t account for the amount of indirect jobs in communities which have these jobs in higher emission industries. And it doesn’t account for the people working in cafes and communities where people will have to move away from because those jobs are no longer there.
Sharri Markson:
Yeah. All right. Saxon Davidson, thank you so much for sharing.
This transcript of Saxon Davidson on Sharri – Sky News Australia from 6 August 2025 has been edited for clarity.
