Chris Minns’ long awaited energy policy has exposed Labor’s war on privatisation as hot air. Far from his earlier talk of nationalising the grid, Chris Minns’ announcement will see public investment in barely 3 per cent of the energy assets we need to build in the next decade and the projects will still be privately developed and run.
Chris Minns has for months touted his intention to copy Dan Andrews and bring energy supply back into public hands, including on 3 November 2022, when he told Sky News:
“[Dan Andrews’] approach of introducing a government-owned energy provider is something I think governments and oppositions need to look at.”
And again on 21 December 2022, Chris Minns told the Sydney Morning Herald in an article titled “Minns Power Play: Labor pushes to put energy supply back in public hands”:
“Ownership of electricity assets and a reservation policy is something that we need to look at.”
Far from his promise to publicly own electricity assets, Chris Minns has now put $1 billion on the table to finance privately owned projects.
This once again shows that Chris Minns is all spin and no substance when it comes to policy and principle.
The biggest promise of his campaign has been to oppose privatisation, yet today he’s admitted that supporting private investment is the best way forward when it comes to delivering cheap energy.
The anti-privatisation brigade is happy to spend the proceeds of asset recycling and Labor says it will redirect money from the Restart NSW Fund. But that money is already allocated to projects including the Sydney Metro West and Housing Acceleration Fund. A plan to use $1 billion from Restart would otherwise be ripping out future funding from crucial projects in regional and rural NSW.
Chris Minns has never believed in public ownership. As chief of staff to the roads minister in the last Labor government he privatised toll roads and now his public ownership of energy policy is all about private investment.
While we welcome Chris Minns’ unexpected change of heart, unfortunately, he still doesn’t understand what is required to modernise our electricity grid.
While Chris Minns thinks he can solve the energy transition with $1 billion, our Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap is driving $32 billion of private investment into the NSW electricity system. His policy is a drop in the ocean of what’s needed to modernise our grid.
Labor’s $1 billion is barely enough pumped hydro to power 6.4 per cent of Sydney’s homes at peak times. In fact, it’s barely enough to cover Kogarah, Canterbury and Heffron.
Labor simply can’t be trusted. They can’t be trusted to manage money, they can’t be trusted to build infrastructure, they can’t be trusted to transition our energy system and they can’t be trusted to deliver on what they say.
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