It all starts as a bit of a fairytale,” the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, told a room full of renewable energy types in Canberra this week. “Once upon a time there was an independent review into the national energy market.”
 |
| ‘Alan Finkel says a moment has arrived in Australia’s national story. But the Morrison government has nothing to say'. |
Finkel did conduct that review at the behest of Malcolm Turnbull and the states when the objective was to fix the problems that have cascaded through the energy market since Tony Abbott opposed Labor’s carbon price to win an election.
The chief scientist proposed a clean energy target as the fix. Abbott and the deep feelings brigade inside the Coalition didn’t like it. It wouldn’t fly, so Turnbull and the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, retreated and regrouped. They then got officials to produce the national energy guarantee, hoping that would work, given the Neg mechanism dealt with both reliability and emissions reduction, and that might subdue some of the conservative opposition.
Read the story from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “Scott Morrison needs a plan to cut emissions but all he has is a fairytale.”
