How we laughed at the Russian Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier as it was towed around the globe. Well, we aren’t looking that flash, either. Hark at the two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers – they aren’t exactly covering themselves in glory with regard to operational reliability. And the cost of these vessels is enormous. There is something seriously wrong with the Western military industrial base. Russia is churning out ships and subs of very respectable quality for a fraction of the cost as ours. I don’t see many laughing at their reliability issues now.
Anyway, if we’re serious about defence of the homeland, we should scrap or flog off this oiler along with the entire surface fleet, which would be sunk in days if we were ever in a hot war with a dangerous opponent. These boats exist solely to carry out disaster relief duties in the Pacific, and to make good on our commitment to the US alliance (which looks to be entirely one way, and it always will be – anyone who thinks the US will protect us from any nation looking at our shores with covetous eyes and possessing the capacity to fulfil its ambitions needs their head read). They are an expensive indulgence. Our Navy should be entirely under da sea. We should have enough subs lurking off our shores to make the marginal cost of invading the country too high.
And we should look at who provides the biggest and best bang for our buck. That means considering the dreaded Russkie offerings. And, yes, it also means radically altering our relationship with the US, so I expect it will not happen any time soon, and certainly not at the initiation of the Australian side – the US may well cut us loose when they can no longer afford to maintain their global defence alliances.
With regard to the forbidden Russian option, I’ll also add that whilst US may still lead the world in naval design, it is at least a generation behind the Russians in terms of the munitions its vessels can fire. They are so far in front of us in terms of the speed and range of their missiles of all classes, not to mention our complete inability to intercept the most dangerous of these missiles (and even some of the models currently being superceded), it is getting laughable that we still purport to have a technological edge over them. Let’s not even talk about their missiles defence capabilities, which can intercept most of pretty much everything we could throw at them with the exception of a full nuclear strike.
The best those who disagree with this assessment can do is assert that these Russian systems don’t really have the capabilities claimed. That presumption seems a dangerous gamble to me. What if they do? Aside from anti-Russian animus and/ or blind faith in Western technological superiority, why would you think they don’t? The Russians and the Soviets who preceded them have long had an edge over the West in these technologies. We bet on overwhelming air and naval projection capabilities, they bet on platforms that could take these threats out. Why wouldn’t they be better at it than we are?
So that is the story of defence procurement in the West. We pay a fortune for second rate capabilities that often don’t work when you need them to. And Australia is locked into this regime, a regime that stands in stark opposition to the most fundamental of our national interests – the ability to protect our borders from foreign invasion.
For wonks: Popular Mechanics describes the process. Given the intimidating size and remoteness, geological stability, and low rainfall of Australia’s interior, it would hardly be possible to find a better location.
A future Coalition government would seek to build nuclear power plants in Gippsland in Victoria, Gladstone in Queensland, Port Augusta in South Australia, Collie in Western Australia and the Hunter in NSW.
Seven reactors would be built in total.
Interesting timing, given that the Queensland LNP has ruled out nukes but Dutton wants to build two reactors there.
Sez you. All wind puffery and sunburn is your choice, over thousands of miles of this continent and renewed every twenty to twenty-five years.
Talk about ‘renewables’ that new renewing themselves constantly, that is ridiculous infrastructure planning and you know it.
Meanwhile, let’s keep our useful coal-fired power stations.
Maybe some of these reactor sites could be turned over to new high-tech coal fired power, once the scare of the anthropogenic warming hoax is more generally accepted.
Dutton is arguing for ‘a mix’, and that is the right way to go at present.
Crossie
June 19, 2024 9:49 am
And again if late 19th Aboriginals adopted Christianity, apparently with enthusiasm as so many became pastors and ministers I doubt the clarity of handed down spiritual beliefs and more importantly why we should care about them.
I suspect that most of the so-called presentations of the aboriginal culture is an invention of ambitious applicants for taxpayer money and aspirants to academic fame. Without recorded proof and interruptions in oral history perpetuation it is just fiction.
?If Aboriginal culture was so superior and beloved by practitioners why did it fold like a wet origami when it came into contact with modernity and Christianity? Could it have anything to do with the new arrivals providing a superior lifestyle?
An anthropologist once remarked of his leftist colleagues that dirt is matter out of place: for example, an Aborigine or Pacific Islander who embraces Christianity is a contradiction in terms, even worse than a white colonialist.
Sancho Panzer
June 19, 2024 9:53 am
Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns’ St Kilda office attacked, set on fire by pro-Palestine vandals.
Well, this was all a bit of sport for Luigi when he thought he could unclip the collar of the Pali-Feral dog and watch it fight Torries. Bit of a problem when the feral dog turns on it’s handler.
Tom
June 19, 2024 9:53 am
None of these reactors will ever be built.
LOL. Thanks, Monts. Your wrongology record is unblemished.
The LREZ will work by households with rooftop solar transferring the energy they generate during the day into local batteries, to be transferred back during the night-time when energy usage peaks.
I suspect they’re not really creating a seperate electrical grid for all those multitudes of rooftop panels.
A perfect opportunity for the Greens to put forward a new green policy. Ships with engines will always run the risk of breaking down, but the wind has no moving parts!
What Australia needs to do invest billions of dollars in developing a new kind of ship. One that somehow is able to tap into the energy of the wind. Perhaps it can have things like trees on them – big trunks soaring upward with bits branching out sideways, and from these sideways bits you could put big sheets that the wind will push into.
These windships will be a new kind of ship! Much better than those big smelly ones we have now, and better than the ones that brought people to Australia – with all those colonised slaves below deck rowing their great big oars.
And best of all is that you can get Labor on board by merely uttering the magic words in Albo’s ear: Australia can become a windship powerhouse!
I love ships with sails, 18th and 18th Century ones the best also GPSail and America’s Cup for the technology.
Dr Faustus
June 19, 2024 9:56 am
Interesting timing, given that the Queensland LNP has ruled out nukes but Dutton wants to build two reactors there.
I’d agree on the confusion issue.
But if Dutton offers concessional power for a Nuclear Industry Hub in Gladstone, Christwhatafulli will have his daks down in seconds and be nuancing for all he’s worth. (There’s a throw, if ever there was one.)
Oh come on
June 19, 2024 9:57 am
They ain’t that flash, look up Zumwalt destroyers and Littoral Combat Vessels
Yep. I mean, on paper the tech is great (especially the Zumwalt). It just doesn’t work that well, if at all.
Muddy
June 19, 2024 9:59 am
My meandering response to Rosie’s 8:40 a.m. post:
Might that not be the “world’s oldest reconstructed culture?”
My layman’s understanding is that culture is something that changes due to both internal (population increase/decrease) and external factors. It is responsive, not chiselled in stone (so to speak). We know that due to geographic isolation (with the exception of northern coastal and island areas), there were no external influences, which inhibited the development of technologies (such as tools) and alternative social structures and economic concepts. That is understandable.
It is also understandable that Europeans, who had not been so geographically isolated, viewed the state of technological development as ‘primitive’ because comparably, it was.
From European settlement, indigenous culture changed in response to external influence, as had every other culture in recorded history which had not possessed that same geographic isolation.
Arguably, it is only in the past handful of decades that pre-settlement indigenous culture has been reconstructed, significantly due to the recorded observations of 19th Century Europeans, and non-indigenous Australians perceiving value – cultural and financial – in that reconstruction.
While not ignoring the generosity of non-indigenous Australians’ interest in indigenous history, art, artefacts, and general well-being, it is impossible not to imagine that without the significant financial sums from the Australian taxpayer, this reconstructed indigenous culture – strangely and ahistorically nationalised – would not exist. Conceivably, there would be pockets of passionate ‘amateurs’ (not in a derogatory sense, but unfunded), but little else.
Here we are, funding – in material wealth and positive intentions – the reconstruction of a culture we have no connections with, nor do we owe any loyalty to, while our own Christian, western European culture has radically changed over the last eight decades. How much more generosity must we – can we – exhibit, while being spat at and derided?
I’m too wound-now to finish this. I’m an Australian, and proud of it. It’s as simple as that.
Because of our relatively isolated geography, our current culture is likewise decaying towards the same primitive level as the Abos. Long term we will become a light brown nation with a privileged elite and a vast underclass living at subsistence levels on whatever crumbs of energy the elite deign to provide. The relentless importation of low IQ, low innovation replacements is only accelerating this transition.
You can’t blame the Abos for the tyranny of distance and isolation, and it would be the height of hubris to believe that we are not all subject to the same inexorable fate as them.
We are certainly on that trajectory, Barry. We have a fruit salad of cultures (plural), some of which are deemed of more value.
The point I was trying to make in my ramble was that Australian indigenous cultures (plural, not the homogenised indig blob) was largely discarded by them and is now being reconstructed: financed and supported by non-indigs, for which the latter are still held in revulsion.
I don’t have a problem with reconstruction, but there is a need to be honest about it, and also to acknowledge those who have enabled it.
In simpler terms, Aboriginal culture died on contact with Great Britain.
The Great Dying of Aboriginal Culture continues to this day and all the financial and philosophical support will not change that timeline appreciably.
However, the cost to the individuals continues to grow in the alcoholism, murders, injuries, and just common old violence perpetrated on the poor buggers. It’s only of any use to those who refuse Canute wise*, that the tide is coming in.
(I’m using the common every day idea of why Canute was sitting on a chair which isn’t why he did it.)
Gabor
June 19, 2024 9:59 am
m0nty
None of these reactors will ever be built.
I agree, nor should they be, must emphasise, I have nothing against nuclear but with the coal reserves we have no need for them.
Refurbish the existing coal plants to today’s standard or build new high efficiency ones makes a lot more sense.
Gabor, I’ve suggested in a reply to M0nty above that some new coal-fired power stations should also be part of Dutton’s ‘mix’. Also, that M0nty’s dream of vast ‘renewable’ installations is not worthy of the term renewable, because they require new plant to be installed every 25 years or less.
This is disastrous infrastructure building. One good cyclone would see a lot of it tumble or smash.
We’ve already built infrastructure around coal, and reaped it’s benefits.
Now we need to reap the benefits of a Nuclear style infrastructure, many of which can’t be gained through coal.
E.g. Medical radiotherapy, the ability to store and burn the worlds nuclear waste, and the technologies inherent in that burning.
The world used to distill off the gasoline fraction of oil (distillate as it was known as.) and dump the rest of the crude. One day, a refining company boss said to his engineers – “Find something to with this waste, it’s really expensive to get rid of.” And the plastics and catalytic conversion processes created wealth undreamt of for us.
Hairy and I lived 5km down the road from the one at Heysham in the UK once, near Lancaster, for four months in a holiday flat where others in this temporary accommodation were engineers working at the plant. There was a pleasant Council picnic park right next to the big towers. I found it interesting because the park had once been a gathering point to keep British slaves awaiting pick-up by Viking traders who liked the deep-water port at Heysham. The Romans also used this port, with boatmen who ferried supplies in to the fort at Lancaster along the estuary of the River Lune.
Locals weren’t concerned about the plant, even though it was an older one.
I guess Dutton’s announcement is also an admission that SMRs are stillborn. Presumably he wouldn’t go through all this electoral pain just for nine SMR-sized plants. Or maybe he is that stupid?
Of course he does. He is a fascist, just like the vandals.
Muddy
June 19, 2024 10:27 am
‘I’m too wound-up now…’ that was meant to be.
*Sigh*
johanna
June 19, 2024 10:32 am
Re the Defence disasters:
Its the same syndrome that has led to multiple IT disasters in the public (and private) sectors.
They start out with a big picture, which does everything and solves all problems.
Then, they do a ‘scoping study’ which is meant to define some parameters about cost and what can be delivered.
Next, a tender is drawn up.
Tenderers bid.
After a very long time (we are talking years after the initial ‘scoping study’) someone wins. By then, the world has changed.
The IT world has changed, compatability has changed, goddamit, everything has changed.
Meanwhile, the client has asked for a whole bunch of changes (we’d like a kangaroo to be the screensaver, plus we want to extend the range of the missiles).
No biggie.
Then the DEI taksforce get on board and demand separate quarters for male, female and undecided.
Defence has had the project management skills of a five year old.
In fairness, other departments (especially DSS) are even worse.
Let’s not forget the decades old project to integrate our health records. I, for one, hope that it never succeeds.
!
The concept of a managerial class that is capable of everything has morphed into a managerial caste that is only capable of screwing everything it touches.
And Just Like That!
All those reporters are suddenly experts in energy.
Diogenes
June 19, 2024 10:36 am
The LREZ will work by households with rooftop solar transferring the energy they generate during the day into local batteries, to be transferred back during the night-time when energy usage peaks.
I suspect they’re not really creating a seperate electrical grid for all those multitudes of rooftop panels.
Our village is a modified version of one of these. It’s not working as intended as the grid still needs to be able to take the excess from when the batteries are full.
Our local grid can’t take the power and we have so overloaded it, the park owner got a whopping $5 fi credit, (not a great return on 180 houses *6.6kw) so we are on self consumption, we generate power on our panels, we use that that first and then the battery is topped up. Because of the way the inverters work in this mode we now draw 2-4 times as much as from the grid as we used to.
The idea of households selling electricity to the power grid is Dope-Smoking Nimbin Hippie Dreaming 101 — authored by a stoned gender studies student after electrical engineers were locked out of the process.
People at Muswellbrook NSW have lived near two large coal fired power plants for a long time, no probs!
People in France live near Nuclear power plants and have done so for a long time. France sells power to other Euro countries who haven’t been so smart.
The ash from coal fired power stations contains much uranium and thorium in microscopic zircon and similar minerals. I expect that the coal power causes far more radiation exposure over a far wider population, that all nuclear power plants in history.
Bungonia Bee
June 19, 2024 10:38 am
I don’t hear any reporters being experts on aluminium smelting.
It takes heaps of affordable power, that’s why they’d rather not talk about it.
The joke that is ‘thugby’ and it’s Sunday footie management style in action .. again! Yesterday afternoon Soufs released a official statement claiming the rumour that Damien Cooke was leaving was pie-in-the-sky fairytale media fantasy … This morning ….. duuuuuuuh!
It was explained a few days after the mass murders and abductions that the Israeli government was reliant on the high security fence etc for protection.
That isn’t an explanation, that is an excuse.
How does this incredible report invalidate or add anything new the Israelis were too reliant on tech and they failed to act despite being ripped off? That is, notwithstanding the fact Israeli intel would be overloaded with threats all the time.
A new document with new details adds nothing new?
H B Bear
June 19, 2024 10:43 am
Varvel the pick of today’s toons?
Sancho Panzer
June 19, 2024 10:47 am
Diogenes at 8:00.
Crikey!
You’re in the wars.
Are you permanently on insulin?
Or will you go back on oral tablets when the kidney picks up?
I initially read the banner as “Proud Supporters of Joe Biden and The Pedophiles” and wondered if they would be as big as the Wiggles?*
*Not suggesting the Wiggles were anything but honest musos, just looking at similar target audiences.
The Biden Administration is proving to be just another criminal enterprise – a Mafia to be honest.
They appear to be engineering a financial crash and then confiscating private citizens funds.
Given the lag time for nuclear plants, Dutton needs to take on the gas cartel and move towards a domestic reservation policy or propose another mechanism to guarantee supply at an affordable price or we’re stuffed.
This plus the fact that any nuke plant would require massive amounts of direct government investment and/or subsidy… yeah this is not a conservative policy in the least.
But it was never meant to be a realistic policy. Just a figleaf for the coal barons.
We need large dispatchable power stations Monty because you lot have been closing down large dispatchable coal fire power stations to fight imaginary climate fairies.
I’d prefer Dutton to promise HELE coal plants actually, but nuclear will do.
(It’s a sensible policy since conventional nuke plants are well developed technology, whereas SMRs are newer and there are only a few of them operating yet. Apart from in subs of course. I would like CANDU so we could use thorium as well as uranium. We have lots and lots of thorium which presently is useless.)
Wow! Even the green are in favour of nuclear power.
H B Bear
June 19, 2024 11:07 am
Spud not going to die wondering. The end of Dr John and no policy from Opposition?
Boambee John
June 19, 2024 11:09 am
mUntyfa
This plus the fact that any nuke plant would require massive amounts of direct government investment and/or subsidy… yeah this is not a conservative policy
Solar, wind and the associated transmission lines also “require massive amounts of direct government investment and/or subsidy”. They are not a conservative policy.
H B Bear
June 19, 2024 11:11 am
Electricity policy has killed off a few PMs. Look out Albo.
The US is up to 15 years behind China in the construction of advanced nuclear power technologies, as the Chinese Government provides significant funding and resources to its industry, according to a report released on Monday by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
The Washington-based non-partisan research institute highlighted that China plans to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction with an average construction time of around seven years, far faster than most other nations.
That’s an average of 7 years, with the faster plants under five years. I know they also have operational pebble-bed SMRs that are fully commissioned and producing commercial electricity.
I thought Albo is cuddling with China right now, surely he could get them to build us some reactors.
Kieran: This is the “party of small government” re-nationalising power.
Yeah. So?
Labo and Greens have so f*cked the power system that it’s an emergency.
I don’t have a problem with massive government investment in certain infrastructure projects. France has profited handsomely from its early investments in nuclear energy and high speed rail, for instance. I think we’ve well and truly missed the boat on the latter (high speed rail will be obsolete before a return on the investment is possible even in an absolute best case scenario where the network is planned perfectly and constructed without a hitch, which would never happen) but it isn’t too late for nuclear power. It is proven technology requiring a large upfront investment that will likely pay off in the long term.
I wonder if the coalition jumped too soon, though. Perhaps the Australian public requires a good taste of what a green energy future based on solar and wind with no reliable baseload generator is like before it will resist the inevitable nuclear power scare campaign.
I bet the ABC is already making inquiries with HBO to buy and air Chernobyl.
OCO: It is proven technology requiring a large upfront investment that will likely pay off in the long term. Unfortunately, it also requires strict adherence to the legal question of the anti nuclear class, the unions, and others who were referred to in some cases as “Wreckers.” They are the major reasons nuclear plants take so long to build – money well spent by the USSR and China.
Boambee John
June 19, 2024 11:21 am
Just thinking about so-called “renewables”.
The description is, ironically, not inaccurate. The solar and wind generators need to be “renewed” around every 15 or 20 years.
The left must be absolutely erect with excitement that the right now think that buying Soviet gear and embracing Moscow and Beijing and scorning democracy and the West is the way to go.
Internationally, the left must think it is almost mission accomplished at this point. Green light, green light, green light.
How disappointingly weak you all are.
There is no more ‘left’ and ‘right’, just patriot or traitor. Do you seriously think our government is acting, or even trying to act, in our interests?
WHENEVER did the world work in that way?
What the hell makes you think for one second that you deserve anyone else acting in your interest?
Grow up and act in your own interest.
But don’t try to convince me that anyone parroting the propaganda points from Russia and China about my country, my culture, my people, my heritage is in my interest. These are OUR geopolitical rivals or enemies, no matter how bad you think democracy, how corrupt you think our leaders or how pissed off you get about your circumstances.
Dr Faustus
June 19, 2024 11:24 am
Given the lag time for nuclear plants, Dutton needs to take on the gas cartel and move towards a domestic reservation policy or propose another mechanism to guarantee supply at an affordable price or we’re stuffed.
Domestic gas reservation was raised as a significant industry issue in the lead up to commitment to the Queensland LNG projects.
It’s a complicated technical/economic issue for CSG – now probably too hard to deal with at a reasonable cost – but there were solutions in 2012/13.
Alas, too complicated for then Minister, Andrew Cripps, to wrap his mighty brain around.
Have you clocked the state of democracy in the West and the West in general recently? What is not to scorn? And it isn’t as though things are getting better. We’re living on the fumes of our once great civilisation.
As far as Australia goes, I’m not saying we have to hitch our cart to the Russian and/ or Chinese horse or whatever. I’m saying we go our own way and be pragmatic about what works and what doesn’t from all parts of the world, free from obligations to great powers.
Our reliance on non-great power Spain for naval vessels is not working out all that well.
Lysander
June 19, 2024 11:32 am
Some of the focus group work coming out of Redbridge was, at first, exciting and then a bit worrying.
Redbridge reported that most of the people in their focus groups weren’t really interested in green energy to save the planet. Well, that’s a good start because its killing the planet.
But, worryingly, the groups liked ruinables because it “diversified the market” and would “push prices down.”
I’ve done a lot of straw polling amongst many friends who’ve opted into rootftop solar. For the $15K+ investment (usually loaned via the solar company) over a 5-7yr period (due to the financial structure of such companies), they say they are paying more in energy still but “maybe” not as much as others; however, most say its negligible. The cost of the loan, however, means, you’re basically paying more than you normally would. Just, on loans, not electricity.
I don’t know too many “middle Australians” who have a handy $15K in their wallet plus another $5K+ for a(n “optional”) battery.
The “funniest” things are those friends of mine who opted in around 10-12 years ago when Barnett was throwing cash at it. They didn’t realise these things have a (diminishing) shelf life of 12 years, if you’re lucky. You only see a very marginal return in years 7/8 to 11/12 when you’ve paid off your loan and have to get new ones!
Won’t be long now until the second installment of panels will be needed by quite a few people. One family member is on second lot of panels (SA early adopter). Have no idea of their economics, we just had a generator installed(suburbs), figure it will hold its resale value in the long run even if we never have to use it.
Watching idiots cheer on Russia’s attack on a Western ally which was ready to join NATO has been sickening.
It can no longer be excused as a temporary and understandable reaction to the draconian covid tyranny.
At this point you are enemies of my country.
Yes, our elites revealed themselves to all of us. They’re awful. All elites everywhere always are.
Yes, politics is dirty. Always has been. Did you never notice until the Russian and Chinese began ramping up the information war?
The future is bleak. I maintain a state of cheerful pessimism. No one ever told you the good times could last forever. No one guaranteed you anything.
Like every other creature on the planet you have to fight for existence, and like every other creature except small children and pets, you have enemies.
Given that every prolonged war eventually boils down to defending kith and kin and hearth and home rather than an ideology, this is a question that will have to be faced by pro-Putin & pro-CCP Westerners sooner or later.
No Arky. I disagree with you strongly. If Queenslanders were being shelled and murdered by NSWelshmen, would you expect us to sit on our arses doing nothing about it?
And yes the situation is a bit more nuanced than that, but when civilians are being killed that’s where the rubber hits the road.
Otherwise, I’m in agreement with much of what you say.
This plus the fact that any nuke plant would require massive amounts of direct government investment and/or subsidy… yeah this is not a conservative policy in the least.
I dunno Dover. I think Conservatism (traditionally) has been associated with the Right. I don’t think the old linear line works anymore.
How does one explain things like the Democractic Labor Party? They were Labor Labor Labor through and through (economically) but a lot more (ethically/morally?) conservative than the Labor Party.
mUntyfa’s definition of “conservative” is essentially leftard propaganda, and not to be taken seriously.
Oh come on
June 19, 2024 11:40 am
It is sickening that modern Ukraine is a Western ally. Anyone supporting that regime is either extraordinarily ignorant or they don’t give a rat’s about the ‘Western values’ they purport to champion, which the Kiev regime is fundamentally at odds with.
GreyRanga
June 19, 2024 11:42 am
I hope they go with the one earmaked in Jervis Bay. I reckon my land values would double. I was really pissed when I was doing work for Power Nuclear Co. Japan. In the early 80’s. Shut down an exploration site overnight and it was a goer. No Vision is how politicians should label themselves. What mediocrities we are being led by. Can’t even defend ourselves yet unending supply for every useless person and idea that have no benefit to Australia. Australia has been so kind to me and my family and we responded in kind by not being a burden. Now we’re providing a lifestyle for the perennial whingers, grifters and hopeless to a standard that half the taxpayers don’t have.
BobtheBoozer
June 19, 2024 11:43 am
From JC’s June 18, 2024 8:29 pm comment:
It’s mind boggling. No it’s actually freaking criminal. China, the world’s largest importer of energy has one of the cheapest electricity costs in the world.
China 8 cents
Australia 28 cents
US 17 cents.
If Australia were to nationalise all the electrical generating plants – including the solar and wind factories, pay them off over say 10 years, and charge the same price for electrons as China does – 8 cents – would the boost in production and the savings to consumers cover the costs?
This is an economics question – put pencils to paper and run those calculators hot, boys and girls.
We privatised the wrong things.
Education, health, the ABC and welfare should have been fully privatised. You know, the expensive stuff full of actual communists.
We should have kept power stations and the commonwealth employment service.
Legislation to guarantee low power prices.
Commonwealth guarantees employment and anyone who refuses a job offered becomes instantaneously reliant on private charity. Not government welfare.
Australia spends billions upon billions on useless green energy projects (Snowy Two, for instance as well as transmission lines from the major agricultural areas we despoil with so-called ‘renewables’). With some diversion of major projects and leftard boondoggles into nuclear power plants we’d ride over the cost and hardly notice it.
Oh come on
June 19, 2024 11:45 am
Now, Arky. Are you going to engage substantively with anything I’ve written here or are you just continue to bloviate obliquely about traitors, rats in the ranks, your enemies etc?
Whatever dark place thinking about our future your mind goes, rest assured my vision of our future is much, much worse than yours. I understand fully the hell towards which our foolish leaders are propelling us. I long ago foresaw and forewarned.
I told everyone that the DEI, woke insanity would not stay in the schools. When others here laughed, years ago and said “Wait until they reach the workforce, reality will knock the nonsense out of them, nyuck, nyuck, nyuck”. I said it would not work that way. I warned that when that ideology met reality, it was reality that would bend. And it has. It has changed the world.
I warned for decades that deindustrialisation would come back and bite us. Now we complain that Ukraine is using up more ammunition than we can make. I warned that what had eaten footwear, clothing and textiles and was at that time eating manufacturing would not stop there.
I warned it had nothing to do with competitive advantage and everything to do with weakening the West. And here we are. Go to the supermarket. Look at the bacon on the shelves Where is it made? Not here. Not the reasonably priced stuff. Look at the ongoing attempts to destroy agriculture. The farmers who laughed at the closure of local factories and those who taunted “They took our jerbs”, now look down the barrel of the same lunatic forces. Dispite the fact that it was the closure of factories I worked in that amused them, I don’t see their current travails as at all amusing. I don’t think the coming famines are amusing.
I don’t think the destruction of going agricultural concerns is any better than the destruction of our industrial base. I hate that our security relies on the USA. As much as I admire the US, for most of my life we at least maintained the delusion that we would defend ourselves.
The life you would lead under a new Soviet empire, or as a vassal of China would bear no resemblance to what you have now, or even what you will have should we begin the corrective course of backbreaking hard work and hardships required to rebuild our nations.
Those trying to convince you that it would be like living in Moscow or Beijing or even a second tier Chinese city with all the cool new infrastructure are lying, or do not understand how other ethnicities are treated and incorporated into those powers. You would not be a valued Russian or Chinese citizen in that model. You would be the Uighur, or the Tibetan or Chechen. Or worse.
Our leaders are awful. Correct. It would be those same awful leaders acting on behalf of Beijing or Moscow ruling your life.
The West is the best. Fight for it.
I was almost alone in predicting they would steal the election in 2020 once I saw the postal votes numbers in October that year.
And no one seems to have understood that Biden would not step down.
He might become so debilitated that replacing him is unavoidable, but the machine behind him will not do that unless it has to.
You know the difference between our leaders and someone like Putin? Putin seems to actually like Russia and care about its welfare. In this respect, it’d be nice if our leaders felt the same way about the countries they lead.
Incidentally, I have lived in China and have witnessed firsthand the inherent structural problems and contradictions that that country will need to grapple with going forward. I suspect I buy into the glossy brochure version of modern China presented in the West even less than you do.
The West in its traditional strongholds is lost. I’m not saying give up or surrender to despair. I am saying be prepared for what follows, and to rebuild. There are going to be arks of Western civilisation in the world from where it is possible to rebuild, and these will be in central and eastern Europe – and, yes, in Russia.
Now, backing the very people who have ruined our civilisation is not smart. Reflexively opposing the enemies of those people is not smart. Their enemies are not necessarily our enemies.
Was your point that Australian leaders should be more like Putin? But that seems not to line up with your reluctance (which I generally agree with) to not involve us in wars.
I mean, if our leaders were the perfect mirror of Putin, Ukraine would be like the Korean War with US troops on the ground in contact with the Russians.Our lot are being very, very careful to tip toe around, unlike during the 20th century.
My point was that there was a time when Western leaders at the very least manifested a desire for their own countries to prosper, that their own countrymen should advance, and these were their first priorities. I see Putin manifests this towards Russia and Russians. It is a characteristic that I wish Australian leaders manifested towards Australians, yet they do not and have not done so for many years. It is the same for all liberal Western democracies – our leaders uniformly are concerned governing to benefit themselves, the other members of their ruling caste and their global peers. It is a good part of the reason why the West is lost.
So no, I do not want Putin to be leader of Australia or any nonsense like that. I think Putin is a good leader of Russia, however. I think he earned a great deal of credibility from ordinary Russians for what they see as his actions in leading their country out of the chaotic and catastrophic 1990s, for taking the country back from the foreign and domestic looters who were expropriating anything of value from the carcass of the Soviet Union, and for restoring a sense of social normalcy and stability. I think their view of Putin is largely correct, and I would probably also place a great deal of faith in him if I were Russian and lived through those times.
I get the feeling he loves the idea of Russia. A powerful and dominating Russia where the nations on his borders are a glacis plate that wars are fought on – not the Russia he wants to survive.
This is the concept design of a zero emissions small modular reactor.
Nuclear energy has proven to get electricity prices and emissions down all over the world.
Out of the world’s 20 largest economies, Australia is the only one not using nuclear energy or moving towards it.
Zero emissions nuclear energy is part of the answer to our energy challenges.
It works with renewables and would allow Australia to get to net-zero. It will keep the lights on 24/7 and keep electricity costs down.
Right now, Australia’s energy comes from 63 per cent fossil fuels and 37 per cent renewables.
As we transition away from fossil fuels, Labor’s renewables-only approach means Australia risks a massive energy black hole and extraordinary costs.
Labor is stuck in the past, and like most of their policies, it is not forward-thinking, and you are suffering because of it. The Coalition will not make the same mistake.
I announced today that a future Federal Coalition government will introduce zero-emissions nuclear energy in Australia to work in partnership with renewable energy and gas as part of a balanced energy mix.
Our plan will deliver net-zero electricity by 2050, lower power bills and a strong and resilient economy.
What a load of twaddle. Is he proposing SMRs or big-arse traditional plants? Nine SMRs would be a drop in the ocean, and not make a dent in our 2050 energy requirements.
None of it makes any sense at all, except to muddy the waters on behalf of his billionaire donors.
Everything you’ve written is ‘twaddle’, Nazi. You talk about ‘billionaire donors’ but the truth is you don’t mind those billionaires who adhere to your pathetic leftist ideology, names such as Andrew Forrest and Simon Holmes a Court.
Nazi salute and public display of symbols to be punishable by up to five years in prison in proposed WA laws
Premiers office assures me that the legislation is restricted to the Nazi salute and display of Nazi symbols, it won’t extend to Hamas banners and chants of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be free. “
The Port Augusta site is not vacant. It is already being repurposed as a green cement & concrete plant and a minerals export port. The transmission lines are not idle. They are used every day by wind & solar generators around Port Augusta & in the Mid North.
Same applies for pretty much all of the locations Dutton proposed. His policy is DOA.
All that farmland you want to cover in crappy turbines and transmission lines is currently being used for farming. But one ‘green’ cement factory, oh no, we better not disrupt that!
Turbines and solar panels have a long history of deployment in existing farmland without disrupting it. Livestock enjoy the shade, and the pasture grows just as well.
That’s a good one. Farms are higher tech than most IT industries, software and hardware both. Plus they actually have to make things rather than run fantasy sports websites.
Infrasound. Bird and bat fatalities in the millions. Catastrophic real estate price collapses. If that isn’t disruption then I don’t know what is. As Gez told you he can’t operate his standard farm machinery since the wires are too low.
Sorry, Monty, you are out of your depth, here. Obviously you cannot crop canola, oats, lucerne or any damn fodder cereal for humans or livestock when the damn paddock is covered in solar panels!
So what are we left with? Pasture for cattle or sheep? Well, cattle are totally unsuitable for stocking solar farms for many reasons – including sun deprived growth of grass, and potential damage to solar infrastructure (if you don’t believe me I have seen structures that weigh a ton being damaged for “itchy” cattle between the seasons.). I don’t have info on sheep, but I suspect that the same restrictions occur re pasture.
Now I have also been talking to a farmer whose cows’ health have been influenced by damn turbines. Now, you may think it is a joke. It is not. The low frequency of the turbines seems to have a disturbing effect on cows, as it does on humans. Successful pregnancy rates have fallen in his herd.
Vicki lives on a farm and runs cattle, M0nty. She grew up on a farm with horses and lives now on her farm in a farming community. The only farmers your Labor ‘lot’ know are what we used to call Pitt Street Farmers, people with rural tax havens, in recent times Labor lawyers with vineyards, and now, God help us, as per the Australian Magazine this weekend, coalitions of greenwashed ‘doctors etc’ purchasing good farmland to deliberately ‘re-wild’ it.
LOL. Is this anything like governments ramming through legislation to force the construction of wind turbines and solar panels on farmland in face of local objections?
Maybe you lot should’ve thought about that before getting your confiscational commie jackboots on. Turnabout is a female dog ain’t it Monty?
We need large dispatchable power stations Monty because you lot have been closing down large dispatchable coal fire power stations to fight imaginary climate fairies.
So Dutton bangs on and on and on about SMRs but then announces zero SMRs, and no investment in infrastructure to build SMRs?
Under the Dutton plan, emissions from extending coal plants in the next fifteen years (minimum) would greatly outweigh theoretical savings from nukes in our lifetimes, Bruce.
Dutton’s nuke plants have 0% likelihood of ever being built, in any case, so any comparison is moot.
ROFL. You do realise, don’t you, that Labor is already extending coal fired power plants. They’re even paying for that. And at the same time they are refusing planning permission for LNG import terminals, thereby forcing the coal plants to continue?
You really are amazingly ignorant Monty. We at this moment are generating about 20% of electricity from renewables. And it’s a good day for wind and solar. It’s usually less than this. How long is it going to take to build another 4 times that? And then all the backup gas turbines for windless cloudy days?
Pollies hate blackouts, that sort of thing gets them turfed out of office.
Those ‘renewable’ installations need regular renewing, far more than the far less fragile and far more permanent facilities of major power stations, whatever energy drives them. And then we have to dispose of the masses of old and dangerous garbage from each regular renewal of panels and turbines – oh, and those turbines use a lot of oil, yes oil, in order to keep turning smoothly. Plus not factored in properly is the cost of constantly ‘renewing’ this breakable and unstable infrastructure of ‘renewables’ and their transmission lines across bushfire and cyclone regions – such infrastructure which we will of course still purchase from China, far more cheaply than we could ever manufacture panels and turbines here in Albo’s bold new ‘manufacturing’ industry: lol, us as a ‘renewables’ super-power. He’s dreaming.
SMR’s can be left to the private sector to fund as appropriate in areas not well serviced by traditional grids, or in specific industries or businesses. They are not all that expensive, however in the current situation in Australia we need full-on baseload for the national grid. There is also a huge, and growing, waiting list for purchase of SMR’s – many countries want them, especially developing countries without much of a national grid. We don’t have that time to waste before getting started on a serious energy transition to nuclear. I hope, in time, when the climate cult has lost its electoral grip, that we can also consider some of those sites for new coal-fired power stations too. Coal is still king of the world.
Bruce of Newcastle
June 19, 2024 12:16 pm
There’s something in common between these two stories. I wonder what it is?
Zali Steggall doesn’t know what you are talking about, Bruce. She very right on with all of the transitioning and related stuff, talking down her opponent Katherine Deves’ very reasonable concerns about mutilating little children in the name of saving them. Vote for mutilating little children. What a nightmare set of ideological idiocies she was supporting in the last Federal election. I hope Stellgall’s opponent reminds her of that in the next election, waving copies of the Cass Report at her. How many children were mutilated and their normal sexual puberty stolen under your careless and uniformed watch, Zali?
bons
June 19, 2024 12:17 pm
SBS has announced itself to have been voted ‘Australia’s most trusted news source’.
Can I say the quiet part out loud: Australia does not have a coherent opposition under Dutton.
Open invitation to anyone in the Coalition that wants serious, responsible and realistic economic policy for Australia to move to the crossbench. #auspol
Chicken Little is chasing imaginary climate fairies. That’s all you need to know about her “serious, responsible and realistic economic policy for Australia”.
Nazi salute and public display of symbols to be punishable by up to five years in prison in proposed WA laws
Premiers office assures me that the legislation is restricted to the Nazi salute and display of Nazi symbols, it won’t extend to Hamas banners and chants of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be free. “
Neither should occur, certainly not in the present political climate, because the Schmittian exception will largely favour the other side.
And it’s hilarious that nuclear, an established technology used around the world is now a Boogie man for so called greenies.
Apparently reverting to third world living conditions is what all the cool kids yearn for.
I vote that when load shedding becomes a reality all households with climate action now placards are the first to get their power turned off.
GreyRanga
June 19, 2024 12:44 pm
I think the Milko has moved in. The munted one is more unhinged, if that is possble, than usual. Like all good lefties he failed comprehension. No doubt mathematics as well to be followed by Econ 101. A few weeks was all it took. That Eureka moment, “I haven’t got a effing clue”. Probably the only accurate thought he’s ever had. Still, he is consistent, consistently wrong. What a maroon. Even Bugs Bunny got it right. This place is probably the only place anyone pays attention to him, even if only to point out how stupid he is.
Can I say the quiet part out loud: Australia does not have a coherent opposition under Dutton.
So because this dummy doesn’t agree with the direction Dutton is taking the party, this means it’s an incoherent opposition? What a fool.
The reality is that Dutton’s the most effective leader of a party elected off the back of losing government at the previous election in recent memory. The opposition is in fact surprisingly coherent under Dutton, to the extent that he may well be the next Prime Minister. Anyone who isn’t a partisan mouth breather would acknowledge this reality even if it doesn’t exactly fill them with joy.
Here’s a fact, if we want to pursue the lunacy of net zero emissions then the only option for reliable cheap energy IS nuclear.
Miltonf
June 19, 2024 12:46 pm
Quoting Steggles is very low energy. Sad.
Bungonia Bee
June 19, 2024 12:49 pm
Luckily Sky counterbalanced their panel on nuclear matters just now. Eamonn Fitzpatrick would fit right in at MSNBC or CNN. Sky needs to be careful how far down full retard lefty disinformational garden path they want to go. David Gazard provided a sensible counterweight, but really, we don’t watch Sky to get what we could get for free from most of the MSM.
I get 95% of my daily news from here. For free. (Well apart from a little regular contribution, which no doubt nearly all of you are matching. 🙂 )
And the information is only marred by Monty who is subsidised by China to be an irritant that can’t be scratched.
He’ll be rolling in it after todays efforts – I wonder how much he gets paid for the traffic?
What you get for free in the MSM airwaves is worth exactly what you paid for it. Which is why blogs like New Catallaxy or The Currency Lad and other centre right social media are informing more and more people.
A few dollars tossed in the right direction can always help these blogs survive, btw.
Anders
June 19, 2024 12:51 pm
SA Labor is currently demolishing the heritage-listed police barracks and horse facilities to make way for the $3 billion new Women’s and Children’s Hospital and having to rebuild those police facilities elsewhere at a cost of $125 million plus. But oh noes, you can’t build a nuclear plant at Port Augusta because ‘green’ (LOL) cement factory!
Oh come on
June 19, 2024 12:51 pm
Cassie, you make a sound point that bears repeating and further elaboration: there are good reasons to develop nuclear energy generation in Australia. Reducing our carbon emissions isn’t one of them.
Yep, as I and some others have also been reiterating here, always adding the rider to our support for nuclear power that coal-fired power would do the same job just as well, as it has always done. Belief in the climate hoax is driving the nuclear push, and during the time we are politically stuck with that we have to build nuclear, so great has been the indoctrination of the voting public into the CO2 scare (with a new generation of indoctrinees arising). Nuclear is ideal base-load power as it has no emissions at all except steam, whereas coal has gaseous and particulate emissions as well as steam. CO2 doesn’t matter but living next to a coal-fired plant can upset some asthmatics.
Bruce of Newcastle
June 19, 2024 12:52 pm
Will the last lefty leaving the no-nukes bus please turn out the lights? Looking at you Monty.
Given the lag time for nuclear plants, Dutton needs to take on the gas cartel and move towards a domestic reservation policy or propose another mechanism to guarantee supply at an affordable price
Couldn’t the nuclear power plants sell carbon credits in advance? Carbon credits are only paper instruments, after all, so a futures market can exist. Isn’t that what all that “green finance” was about?
You really are amazingly ignorant Monty. We at this moment are generating about 20% of electricity from renewables. And it’s a good day for wind and solar. It’s usually less than this.
Dutton literally said today that the correct number is 37% renewables. You are no good at this Bruce. Put the clown nose down.
Monty, I could add up the numbers on that AEMO energy site without needing a calculator. I told you what it was, live and at that particular time. The AEMO data is saved into a ginormous spreadsheet every 5 minutes and there are many apps that visualize it. That happens to be my favourite one.
I also look at the data reasonably often. I would say 15% is more the usual. Oftentimes it is 1% with adverse weather for renewables.
Next time (a) read what I wrote and (b) examine the data I provide. You make yourself look even more ignorant by objecting to the actual real data. Who should I believe, you or my lying eyes?
I am not calling Dutton a liar since I only have your comment about what he said. Given your track record this morning of being approximately 100% wrong about everything I have this suspicion about your assertion.
Plus I gave you the real time data at the point I made the comment. Perfectly accurate since it is the official data from the official energy market operator. And it is a sunny day with pretty good wind. Do your sums. Ok don’t bother with that, from my direct experience you are utterly useless at sums, science, engineering or anything approaching actual reality.
I lived in Mosman when I first moved from Mt. Druitt in 1960.
Oh, the culture shock!!!!!!!!!!!!
A fast learning curve too. I was seventeen and had just started working in advertising as a typist. I quickly became a copywriter. Talk about Peggy in Mad Men.
The electricity market is utterly at the mercy, or lack of, of government policy. It is not a free market. If it was a free market we’d still be paying 10c/kWh, and Victoria would be raking it in because they can generate electricity for 2c/kWh from brown coal.
I almost wish China was in control of our electricity market since Chinese retail electricity is US 8c/kWh.
Why is that Monty? Could it be because they burn more coal for electricity generation than all the rest of the world put together?
It would be because the Chinese economy is centrally controlled. I don’t think they are the John Galt gigachads of free market libertarianism you seem to think they are.
Um Monty our economy is also centrally controlled in most respects, if you hadn’t already noticed. Ask SATP about all the permits he has to get to try and run a business.
The biggest difference is that China doesn’t believe in climate fairies. Nor Rainbow Serpents or lesser spotted newts. Russia and India also don’t.
Plus their universities churn out lots of actual scientists and engineers and very few gender studies graduates.
Here’s a fact, if we want to pursue the lunacy of net zero emissions then the only option for reliable cheap energy IS nuclear.
The idea that a policy (zero emissions) put in place to wreck the West’s industries and upturn the world order through disrupting energy markets, could incorporate a workable nuclear solution is illogical.
You don’t spend decades putting in place a nation wrecking policy just to mitigate it’s destructive power at the last hurdle.
If you are for reducing human emissions you are for reducing humans.
Well done to this Jury.
I hope Charlize’ spirit can now rest.
I pray that her mother develops a rotting skin disease, and that her murderer is placed into General Population in prison.
Of course not Rabz – In Space You Can’t Hear the Farts. Or Smell Them Either.
Oh come on
June 19, 2024 1:18 pm
Now now, go easy on m0nts. He’s a dim bulb who would comfortably get by with a hamster running on a wheel connected to a tiny generator. Of course he finds all of this talk of reliable baseload power supply laughably absurd.
Bungonia Bee
June 19, 2024 1:19 pm
Poor Kieran Gilbert!
He’s so conflicted by the nuclear policy of the coalition.
Keeps making the sort of dubious noises he wouldn’t ever say about Labor’s dodgy energy and EV ones.
All those j’ismists are suddenly experts in energy
Even if they wouldn’t know if their house sized backsides were ablaze.
Farmer Gez
June 19, 2024 1:39 pm
A state owned riddle for Monty.
Chinese company builds a wind project in Western Vic.
All the materials are Chinese sourced and most of the building and operational staff. Direct support mechanisms and some subsidies are paid by the taxpayer and all income is derived from domestic power users with the profits derived from government mandated regulated returns then going back to Chinese investors.
Belt & Road by any other name.
Pogria
June 19, 2024 1:42 pm
Hey Cassie, if you are around, a lovely clip of an Israeli woman and her dog on America’s Got Talent. Simply beautiful.
Hat Tip to Michael Smith.
It’s time Sky found someone less blatantly left-leaning than Kieran to anchor their daily daytime political coverage. The way he keeps plugging away in a biased fashion is rather off-putting.
Instead of paying for Sky News we could get that sort of lefty spin almost anywhere else for free.
An excellent suggestion, BB, but it’s currently not possible as a conga line of green left armchair revolutionaries is 100% of the graduates of Australia’s university journalism courses.
J-school graduates are like Hamas fighters in Gaza: kill one and 100 are ready to replace him.
Roger
June 19, 2024 1:44 pm
I see the Cat hot takes of “state-owned enterprise is actually based conservatism” have already started, LOL.
That very much depends on the nature of the enterprise, the capital required and the service provided.
If there were no state-owned hospitals, for example, the uninsured majority would be unable to access treatment. How would that serve the interests of the nation?
When we needed railways to get wheat, wool and minerals to port the colonial governments were the only entities large enough to take on the investment.
You see, conservatism is pragmatic, not ideological. There is no dogma that the state shouldn’t own enterprises, but rather a practical attitude that the state should only do so when it’s clearly in the public interest and the private market can’t or won’t step up to provide the public good.
That line would be believable Roger, if the last forty years of neoliberalism hadn’t happened.
Your sudden rediscovery of Menzian nation-building regarding nukes is a great departure from recent rhetoric from the right around Snowy 2.0 and the NBN.
LOL, mUntyfa still hasn’t notices that the progenitor of Snowy is, like Cannon-Balls, Holmes a’C and the other parasites, a subsidy harvester of a lefturd inclination. And only a socialist would have neglected to check the geological issues.
As for the NBN, the back of the drinks coaster was completely unnecessary, the results would have come faster and cheaper from private investment.
The problem is sovereign risk. Liars governments pandering eg to potential Greens voters and other morons just cannot be trusted not to destroy the country to get at their ideological enemies.
Sancho Panzer
June 19, 2024 1:47 pm
Miltonf
June 19, 2024 9:34 am
Or DPhils if it’s Oxford. Pretentious tosh.
Why limit yourself to Oxford?
Any philosophy doctorate is a wank and a waste of time unless you intend to teach it to the next generation of pretentious suckers.
A doctorate necessitates an original piece of research. That is an end in itself. In my discipline that was the case – although that was a long time ago & these days I suppose it is a requirement of tertiary teaching.
Some fifty years ago, a nuclear physicist I worked with described a PhD as a moderately intelligent person with a couple of years free. And that was when some rigour was required to get one. Now …
He preferred to work in the real world.
Last edited 7 months ago by Boambee John
Figures
June 19, 2024 1:50 pm
Correct Arky.
I have no issues with nuclear power but leftists cannot be placated – you either destroy them or they destroy you.
Say whatever you need to say to get elected and then treat leftists the same way they treated the unvaccinated.
Australia’s newest warship HMAS Stalwart breaks down, undergoing emergency mechanical repairs
How we laughed at the Russian Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier as it was towed around the globe. Well, we aren’t looking that flash, either. Hark at the two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers – they aren’t exactly covering themselves in glory with regard to operational reliability. And the cost of these vessels is enormous. There is something seriously wrong with the Western military industrial base. Russia is churning out ships and subs of very respectable quality for a fraction of the cost as ours. I don’t see many laughing at their reliability issues now.
Anyway, if we’re serious about defence of the homeland, we should scrap or flog off this oiler along with the entire surface fleet, which would be sunk in days if we were ever in a hot war with a dangerous opponent. These boats exist solely to carry out disaster relief duties in the Pacific, and to make good on our commitment to the US alliance (which looks to be entirely one way, and it always will be – anyone who thinks the US will protect us from any nation looking at our shores with covetous eyes and possessing the capacity to fulfil its ambitions needs their head read). They are an expensive indulgence. Our Navy should be entirely under da sea. We should have enough subs lurking off our shores to make the marginal cost of invading the country too high.
And we should look at who provides the biggest and best bang for our buck. That means considering the dreaded Russkie offerings. And, yes, it also means radically altering our relationship with the US, so I expect it will not happen any time soon, and certainly not at the initiation of the Australian side – the US may well cut us loose when they can no longer afford to maintain their global defence alliances.
With regard to the forbidden Russian option, I’ll also add that whilst US may still lead the world in naval design, it is at least a generation behind the Russians in terms of the munitions its vessels can fire. They are so far in front of us in terms of the speed and range of their missiles of all classes, not to mention our complete inability to intercept the most dangerous of these missiles (and even some of the models currently being superceded), it is getting laughable that we still purport to have a technological edge over them. Let’s not even talk about their missiles defence capabilities, which can intercept most of pretty much everything we could throw at them with the exception of a full nuclear strike.
The best those who disagree with this assessment can do is assert that these Russian systems don’t really have the capabilities claimed. That presumption seems a dangerous gamble to me. What if they do? Aside from anti-Russian animus and/ or blind faith in Western technological superiority, why would you think they don’t? The Russians and the Soviets who preceded them have long had an edge over the West in these technologies. We bet on overwhelming air and naval projection capabilities, they bet on platforms that could take these threats out. Why wouldn’t they be better at it than we are?
So that is the story of defence procurement in the West. We pay a fortune for second rate capabilities that often don’t work when you need them to. And Australia is locked into this regime, a regime that stands in stark opposition to the most fundamental of our national interests – the ability to protect our borders from foreign invasion.
Karl Denninger in AI and the hype surrounding it. He has the runs on the board in computing.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=251500
The whole ‘Dr’ schtick just sounds dirty, cheap and phony now. PhDs are a dime a dozen.
Too true.
I’ll also add that whilst US may still lead the world in naval design
They ain’t that flash, look up Zumwalt destroyers and Littoral Combat Vessels
Or DPhils if it’s Oxford. Pretentious tosh.
Dead liberation is real!
Their vote has been heard!
Check this job ad for a role at the BBC.
Should have read “deadshits”.
This is what 70 years of non-recyclable US Navy nuclear waste looks like – all in one spot.
For wonks: Popular Mechanics describes the process. Given the intimidating size and remoteness, geological stability, and low rainfall of Australia’s interior, it would hardly be possible to find a better location.
Except for the Wagyls that run the show.
Finland seems to have a fix on nuclear waste. They have built deep deep vaults in geo stable rock, will be happy to store waste for a fee.
Dr. F., thanks for above. I note there is a reference to a site called, The Uranium Information Center. Do you know if it is still active?https://web.archive.org/web/20020806140943/http://www.uic.com.au/about.htm
Interesting timing, given that the Queensland LNP has ruled out nukes but Dutton wants to build two reactors there.
None of these reactors will ever be built.
I see that the daily lefturd talking points are out.
Sez you. All wind puffery and sunburn is your choice, over thousands of miles of this continent and renewed every twenty to twenty-five years.
Talk about ‘renewables’ that new renewing themselves constantly, that is ridiculous infrastructure planning and you know it.
Meanwhile, let’s keep our useful coal-fired power stations.
Maybe some of these reactor sites could be turned over to new high-tech coal fired power, once the scare of the anthropogenic warming hoax is more generally accepted.
Dutton is arguing for ‘a mix’, and that is the right way to go at present.
I suspect that most of the so-called presentations of the aboriginal culture is an invention of ambitious applicants for taxpayer money and aspirants to academic fame. Without recorded proof and interruptions in oral history perpetuation it is just fiction.
?If Aboriginal culture was so superior and beloved by practitioners why did it fold like a wet origami when it came into contact with modernity and Christianity? Could it have anything to do with the new arrivals providing a superior lifestyle?
One of the great joys of “oral” only v. written/recorded history is being able to change the context to suit whatever suits your pet theories .. LOL!
An anthropologist once remarked of his leftist colleagues that dirt is matter out of place: for example, an Aborigine or Pacific Islander who embraces Christianity is a contradiction in terms, even worse than a white colonialist.
Well, this was all a bit of sport for Luigi when he thought he could unclip the collar of the Pali-Feral dog and watch it fight Torries.
Bit of a problem when the feral dog turns on it’s handler.
LOL. Thanks, Monts. Your wrongology record is unblemished.
My immediate thought as well – the first shovel to turn the dirt is currently being handed across the counter at Bunnings.
FFS.
I suspect they’re not really creating a seperate electrical grid for all those multitudes of rooftop panels.
Let us preserve this latest piece of what will ultimately prove to be Monty wrongology for posterity.?
A perfect opportunity for the Greens to put forward a new green policy. Ships with engines will always run the risk of breaking down, but the wind has no moving parts!
What Australia needs to do invest billions of dollars in developing a new kind of ship. One that somehow is able to tap into the energy of the wind. Perhaps it can have things like trees on them – big trunks soaring upward with bits branching out sideways, and from these sideways bits you could put big sheets that the wind will push into.
These windships will be a new kind of ship! Much better than those big smelly ones we have now, and better than the ones that brought people to Australia – with all those colonised slaves below deck rowing their great big oars.
And best of all is that you can get Labor on board by merely uttering the magic words in Albo’s ear: Australia can become a windship powerhouse!
Powered by the farts of lefturds?
I love ships with sails, 18th and 18th Century ones the best also GPSail and America’s Cup for the technology.
I’d agree on the confusion issue.
But if Dutton offers concessional power for a Nuclear Industry Hub in Gladstone, Christwhatafulli will have his daks down in seconds and be nuancing for all he’s worth. (There’s a throw, if ever there was one.)
Yep. I mean, on paper the tech is great (especially the Zumwalt). It just doesn’t work that well, if at all.
My meandering response to Rosie’s 8:40 a.m. post:
Might that not be the “world’s oldest reconstructed culture?”
My layman’s understanding is that culture is something that changes due to both internal (population increase/decrease) and external factors. It is responsive, not chiselled in stone (so to speak). We know that due to geographic isolation (with the exception of northern coastal and island areas), there were no external influences, which inhibited the development of technologies (such as tools) and alternative social structures and economic concepts. That is understandable.
It is also understandable that Europeans, who had not been so geographically isolated, viewed the state of technological development as ‘primitive’ because comparably, it was.
From European settlement, indigenous culture changed in response to external influence, as had every other culture in recorded history which had not possessed that same geographic isolation.
Arguably, it is only in the past handful of decades that pre-settlement indigenous culture has been reconstructed, significantly due to the recorded observations of 19th Century Europeans, and non-indigenous Australians perceiving value – cultural and financial – in that reconstruction.
While not ignoring the generosity of non-indigenous Australians’ interest in indigenous history, art, artefacts, and general well-being, it is impossible not to imagine that without the significant financial sums from the Australian taxpayer, this reconstructed indigenous culture – strangely and ahistorically nationalised – would not exist. Conceivably, there would be pockets of passionate ‘amateurs’ (not in a derogatory sense, but unfunded), but little else.
Here we are, funding – in material wealth and positive intentions – the reconstruction of a culture we have no connections with, nor do we owe any loyalty to, while our own Christian, western European culture has radically changed over the last eight decades. How much more generosity must we – can we – exhibit, while being spat at and derided?
I’m too wound-now to finish this. I’m an Australian, and proud of it. It’s as simple as that.
Because of our relatively isolated geography, our current culture is likewise decaying towards the same primitive level as the Abos. Long term we will become a light brown nation with a privileged elite and a vast underclass living at subsistence levels on whatever crumbs of energy the elite deign to provide. The relentless importation of low IQ, low innovation replacements is only accelerating this transition.
You can’t blame the Abos for the tyranny of distance and isolation, and it would be the height of hubris to believe that we are not all subject to the same inexorable fate as them.
We are certainly on that trajectory, Barry. We have a fruit salad of cultures (plural), some of which are deemed of more value.
The point I was trying to make in my ramble was that Australian indigenous cultures (plural, not the homogenised indig blob) was largely discarded by them and is now being reconstructed: financed and supported by non-indigs, for which the latter are still held in revulsion.
I don’t have a problem with reconstruction, but there is a need to be honest about it, and also to acknowledge those who have enabled it.
In simpler terms, Aboriginal culture died on contact with Great Britain.
The Great Dying of Aboriginal Culture continues to this day and all the financial and philosophical support will not change that timeline appreciably.
However, the cost to the individuals continues to grow in the alcoholism, murders, injuries, and just common old violence perpetrated on the poor buggers. It’s only of any use to those who refuse Canute wise*, that the tide is coming in.
(I’m using the common every day idea of why Canute was sitting on a chair which isn’t why he did it.)
I agree, nor should they be, must emphasise, I have nothing against nuclear but with the coal reserves we have no need for them.
Refurbish the existing coal plants to today’s standard or build new high efficiency ones makes a lot more sense.
Why let the Chinese burn our coal if we can’t?
Gabor, I’ve suggested in a reply to M0nty above that some new coal-fired power stations should also be part of Dutton’s ‘mix’. Also, that M0nty’s dream of vast ‘renewable’ installations is not worthy of the term renewable, because they require new plant to be installed every 25 years or less.
This is disastrous infrastructure building. One good cyclone would see a lot of it tumble or smash.
You get it, Gabor. This is not about nukes at all. The real agenda is extending the life of coal.
We’ve already built infrastructure around coal, and reaped it’s benefits.
Now we need to reap the benefits of a Nuclear style infrastructure, many of which can’t be gained through coal.
E.g. Medical radiotherapy, the ability to store and burn the worlds nuclear waste, and the technologies inherent in that burning.
The world used to distill off the gasoline fraction of oil (distillate as it was known as.) and dump the rest of the crude. One day, a refining company boss said to his engineers – “Find something to with this waste, it’s really expensive to get rid of.” And the plastics and catalytic conversion processes created wealth undreamt of for us.
I would be more than happy to live next door to a nuclear power plant.
There would be good security that’s for sure.
Hairy and I lived 5km down the road from the one at Heysham in the UK once, near Lancaster, for four months in a holiday flat where others in this temporary accommodation were engineers working at the plant. There was a pleasant Council picnic park right next to the big towers. I found it interesting because the park had once been a gathering point to keep British slaves awaiting pick-up by Viking traders who liked the deep-water port at Heysham. The Romans also used this port, with boatmen who ferried supplies in to the fort at Lancaster along the estuary of the River Lune.
Locals weren’t concerned about the plant, even though it was an older one.
Sure Cranky, off you trot then, all the way to Traralgon.
Piss off, Nazi.
Would you like a wind tower in your back yard.
Exactly.
Next time ask them if they have enough of the stuff.
That’ll be a fun response.
is Dr Edwards yet another case of the meowing nuns. There is definitely a collective hysteria in the Universities.
I guess Dutton’s announcement is also an admission that SMRs are stillborn. Presumably he wouldn’t go through all this electoral pain just for nine SMR-sized plants. Or maybe he is that stupid?
Hey Nazi, anything to say about a Jewish MP’s electoral office being vandalised overnight? Or perhaps you approve?
Of course he does. He is a fascist, just like the vandals.
‘I’m too wound-up now…’ that was meant to be.
*Sigh*
Re the Defence disasters:
Its the same syndrome that has led to multiple IT disasters in the public (and private) sectors.
They start out with a big picture, which does everything and solves all problems.
Then, they do a ‘scoping study’ which is meant to define some parameters about cost and what can be delivered.
Next, a tender is drawn up.
Tenderers bid.
After a very long time (we are talking years after the initial ‘scoping study’) someone wins. By then, the world has changed.
The IT world has changed, compatability has changed, goddamit, everything has changed.
Meanwhile, the client has asked for a whole bunch of changes (we’d like a kangaroo to be the screensaver, plus we want to extend the range of the missiles).
No biggie.
Then the DEI taksforce get on board and demand separate quarters for male, female and undecided.
Defence has had the project management skills of a five year old.
In fairness, other departments (especially DSS) are even worse.
Let’s not forget the decades old project to integrate our health records. I, for one, hope that it never succeeds.
!
The concept of a managerial class that is capable of everything has morphed into a managerial caste that is only capable of screwing everything it touches.
Why let the Chinese burn our coal if we can’t?
Because we are now a stupid country.
No wonder the Chinese call Albo handsome boy. He is certainly not a smart one and the Chinese are too polite to point it out.
too stupid for words
And Just Like That!
All those reporters are suddenly experts in energy.
Our village is a modified version of one of these. It’s not working as intended as the grid still needs to be able to take the excess from when the batteries are full.
Our local grid can’t take the power and we have so overloaded it, the park owner got a whopping $5 fi credit, (not a great return on 180 houses *6.6kw) so we are on self consumption, we generate power on our panels, we use that that first and then the battery is topped up. Because of the way the inverters work in this mode we now draw 2-4 times as much as from the grid as we used to.
The idea of households selling electricity to the power grid is Dope-Smoking Nimbin Hippie Dreaming 101 — authored by a stoned gender studies student after electrical engineers were locked out of the process.
The iron law of unintended consequences?
People at Muswellbrook NSW have lived near two large coal fired power plants for a long time, no probs!
People in France live near Nuclear power plants and have done so for a long time. France sells power to other Euro countries who haven’t been so smart.
The ash from coal fired power stations contains much uranium and thorium in microscopic zircon and similar minerals. I expect that the coal power causes far more radiation exposure over a far wider population, that all nuclear power plants in history.
I don’t hear any reporters being experts on aluminium smelting.
It takes heaps of affordable power, that’s why they’d rather not talk about it.
The joke that is ‘thugby’ and it’s Sunday footie management style in action .. again! Yesterday afternoon Soufs released a official statement claiming the rumour that Damien Cooke was leaving was pie-in-the-sky fairytale media fantasy … This morning ….. duuuuuuuh!
https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nrl-premiership/nrl-2024-damien-cook-signs-with-st-george-illawarra-dragons-2025-to-leave-south-sydney-rabbitohs-shane-flanagan/news-story/0e2d639b69736a018d15b808c2ae0c4b
That isn’t an explanation, that is an excuse.
A new document with new details adds nothing new?
Varvel the pick of today’s toons?
Diogenes at 8:00.
Crikey!
You’re in the wars.
Are you permanently on insulin?
Or will you go back on oral tablets when the kidney picks up?
Roman Polanski was unavailable for comment.
I initially read the banner as “Proud Supporters of Joe Biden and The Pedophiles” and wondered if they would be as big as the Wiggles?*
*Not suggesting the Wiggles were anything but honest musos, just looking at similar target audiences.
Bank Assets Seized: Yellen’s ORWELLIAN Double Speak & How to MAXIMIZE FDIC Deposit Insurance
The Biden Administration is proving to be just another criminal enterprise – a Mafia to be honest.
They appear to be engineering a financial crash and then confiscating private citizens funds.
This plus the fact that any nuke plant would require massive amounts of direct government investment and/or subsidy… yeah this is not a conservative policy in the least.
But it was never meant to be a realistic policy. Just a figleaf for the coal barons.
He’s announced they will be Federal government owned. As I say just below: do keep up.
LOL.
Do keep up Monty.
If SMRs are so popular, why is Dutton not including them in his policy?
We need large dispatchable power stations Monty because you lot have been closing down large dispatchable coal fire power stations to fight imaginary climate fairies.
I’d prefer Dutton to promise HELE coal plants actually, but nuclear will do.
(It’s a sensible policy since conventional nuke plants are well developed technology, whereas SMRs are newer and there are only a few of them operating yet. Apart from in subs of course. I would like CANDU so we could use thorium as well as uranium. We have lots and lots of thorium which presently is useless.)
Wow! Even the green are in favour of nuclear power.
Spud not going to die wondering. The end of Dr John and no policy from Opposition?
mUntyfa
Solar, wind and the associated transmission lines also “require massive amounts of direct government investment and/or subsidy”. They are not a conservative policy.
Electricity policy has killed off a few PMs. Look out Albo.
Here you go Monty.
US 15 years behind China in nuclear power – report (17 Jun)
That’s an average of 7 years, with the faster plants under five years. I know they also have operational pebble-bed SMRs that are fully commissioned and producing commercial electricity.
I thought Albo is cuddling with China right now, surely he could get them to build us some reactors.
Chinese construction might not be too popular in the West (WA) after the Perth Childrens Hospital.
Best to stick with BCG and Multiplex. Our boys.
Kieran: This is the “party of small government” re-nationalising power.
Yeah. So?
Labo and Greens have so f*cked the power system that it’s an emergency.
J’ismist discovers his love for free markets.
I don’t have a problem with massive government investment in certain infrastructure projects. France has profited handsomely from its early investments in nuclear energy and high speed rail, for instance. I think we’ve well and truly missed the boat on the latter (high speed rail will be obsolete before a return on the investment is possible even in an absolute best case scenario where the network is planned perfectly and constructed without a hitch, which would never happen) but it isn’t too late for nuclear power. It is proven technology requiring a large upfront investment that will likely pay off in the long term.
I wonder if the coalition jumped too soon, though. Perhaps the Australian public requires a good taste of what a green energy future based on solar and wind with no reliable baseload generator is like before it will resist the inevitable nuclear power scare campaign.
I bet the ABC is already making inquiries with HBO to buy and air Chernobyl.
OCO:
It is proven technology requiring a large upfront investment that will likely pay off in the long term.
Unfortunately, it also requires strict adherence to the legal question of the anti nuclear class, the unions, and others who were referred to in some cases as “Wreckers.”
They are the major reasons nuclear plants take so long to build – money well spent by the USSR and China.
Just thinking about so-called “renewables”.
The description is, ironically, not inaccurate. The solar and wind generators need to be “renewed” around every 15 or 20 years.
Unlike coal or gas fired or nuclear generators.
You’re being too generous there, even the ABC says wind turbines have a lifespan of 10 to 20 years. Talk about absolutely garbage tech.
Everything has a lifespan. Its probably comparable for all fossil fuel plants too, especially on an NPV discounted basis.
The left must be absolutely erect with excitement that the right now think that buying Soviet gear and embracing Moscow and Beijing and scorning democracy and the West is the way to go.
Internationally, the left must think it is almost mission accomplished at this point. Green light, green light, green light.
How disappointingly weak you all are.
There is no more ‘left’ and ‘right’, just patriot or traitor. Do you seriously think our government is acting, or even trying to act, in our interests?
WHENEVER did the world work in that way?
What the hell makes you think for one second that you deserve anyone else acting in your interest?
Grow up and act in your own interest.
But don’t try to convince me that anyone parroting the propaganda points from Russia and China about my country, my culture, my people, my heritage is in my interest. These are OUR geopolitical rivals or enemies, no matter how bad you think democracy, how corrupt you think our leaders or how pissed off you get about your circumstances.
Domestic gas reservation was raised as a significant industry issue in the lead up to commitment to the Queensland LNG projects.
It’s a complicated technical/economic issue for CSG – now probably too hard to deal with at a reasonable cost – but there were solutions in 2012/13.
Alas, too complicated for then Minister, Andrew Cripps, to wrap his mighty brain around.
Another Liars drone.
Have you clocked the state of democracy in the West and the West in general recently? What is not to scorn? And it isn’t as though things are getting better. We’re living on the fumes of our once great civilisation.
As far as Australia goes, I’m not saying we have to hitch our cart to the Russian and/ or Chinese horse or whatever. I’m saying we go our own way and be pragmatic about what works and what doesn’t from all parts of the world, free from obligations to great powers.
Our reliance on non-great power Spain for naval vessels is not working out all that well.
Some of the focus group work coming out of Redbridge was, at first, exciting and then a bit worrying.
Redbridge reported that most of the people in their focus groups weren’t really interested in green energy to save the planet. Well, that’s a good start because its killing the planet.
But, worryingly, the groups liked ruinables because it “diversified the market” and would “push prices down.”
DOWN!!!? OMFG!
Maybe the focus groups were held in Wentworth?
I’ve done a lot of straw polling amongst many friends who’ve opted into rootftop solar. For the $15K+ investment (usually loaned via the solar company) over a 5-7yr period (due to the financial structure of such companies), they say they are paying more in energy still but “maybe” not as much as others; however, most say its negligible. The cost of the loan, however, means, you’re basically paying more than you normally would. Just, on loans, not electricity.
I don’t know too many “middle Australians” who have a handy $15K in their wallet plus another $5K+ for a(n “optional”) battery.
The “funniest” things are those friends of mine who opted in around 10-12 years ago when Barnett was throwing cash at it. They didn’t realise these things have a (diminishing) shelf life of 12 years, if you’re lucky. You only see a very marginal return in years 7/8 to 11/12 when you’ve paid off your loan and have to get new ones!
Won’t be long now until the second installment of panels will be needed by quite a few people. One family member is on second lot of panels (SA early adopter). Have no idea of their economics, we just had a generator installed(suburbs), figure it will hold its resale value in the long run even if we never have to use it.
Watching idiots cheer on Russia’s attack on a Western ally which was ready to join NATO has been sickening.
It can no longer be excused as a temporary and understandable reaction to the draconian covid tyranny.
At this point you are enemies of my country.
Yes, our elites revealed themselves to all of us. They’re awful. All elites everywhere always are.
Yes, politics is dirty. Always has been. Did you never notice until the Russian and Chinese began ramping up the information war?
The future is bleak. I maintain a state of cheerful pessimism. No one ever told you the good times could last forever. No one guaranteed you anything.
Like every other creature on the planet you have to fight for existence, and like every other creature except small children and pets, you have enemies.
Given that every prolonged war eventually boils down to defending kith and kin and hearth and home rather than an ideology, this is a question that will have to be faced by pro-Putin & pro-CCP Westerners sooner or later.
Why isn’t this question faced by pro-GAE westerners?
No Arky. I disagree with you strongly. If Queenslanders were being shelled and murdered by NSWelshmen, would you expect us to sit on our arses doing nothing about it?
And yes the situation is a bit more nuanced than that, but when civilians are being killed that’s where the rubber hits the road.
Otherwise, I’m in agreement with much of what you say.
Robert, I’m sorry, I’m not following. Which thing are you disagreeing about?
Lmao
I dunno Dover. I think Conservatism (traditionally) has been associated with the Right. I don’t think the old linear line works anymore.
How does one explain things like the Democractic Labor Party? They were Labor Labor Labor through and through (economically) but a lot more (ethically/morally?) conservative than the Labor Party.
The salient point here is the idea that a conservative party couldn’t support direct government investment in public infrastructure; which is absurd.
mUntyfa’s definition of “conservative” is essentially leftard propaganda, and not to be taken seriously.
It is sickening that modern Ukraine is a Western ally. Anyone supporting that regime is either extraordinarily ignorant or they don’t give a rat’s about the ‘Western values’ they purport to champion, which the Kiev regime is fundamentally at odds with.
I hope they go with the one earmaked in Jervis Bay. I reckon my land values would double. I was really pissed when I was doing work for Power Nuclear Co. Japan. In the early 80’s. Shut down an exploration site overnight and it was a goer. No Vision is how politicians should label themselves. What mediocrities we are being led by. Can’t even defend ourselves yet unending supply for every useless person and idea that have no benefit to Australia. Australia has been so kind to me and my family and we responded in kind by not being a burden. Now we’re providing a lifestyle for the perennial whingers, grifters and hopeless to a standard that half the taxpayers don’t have.
From JC’s June 18, 2024 8:29 pm comment:
If Australia were to nationalise all the electrical generating plants – including the solar and wind factories, pay them off over say 10 years, and charge the same price for electrons as China does – 8 cents – would the boost in production and the savings to consumers cover the costs?
This is an economics question – put pencils to paper and run those calculators hot, boys and girls.
We privatised the wrong things.
Education, health, the ABC and welfare should have been fully privatised. You know, the expensive stuff full of actual communists.
We should have kept power stations and the commonwealth employment service.
Legislation to guarantee low power prices.
Commonwealth guarantees employment and anyone who refuses a job offered becomes instantaneously reliant on private charity. Not government welfare.
Australia spends billions upon billions on useless green energy projects (Snowy Two, for instance as well as transmission lines from the major agricultural areas we despoil with so-called ‘renewables’). With some diversion of major projects and leftard boondoggles into nuclear power plants we’d ride over the cost and hardly notice it.
Now, Arky. Are you going to engage substantively with anything I’ve written here or are you just continue to bloviate obliquely about traitors, rats in the ranks, your enemies etc?
Whatever dark place thinking about our future your mind goes, rest assured my vision of our future is much, much worse than yours. I understand fully the hell towards which our foolish leaders are propelling us. I long ago foresaw and forewarned.
I told everyone that the DEI, woke insanity would not stay in the schools. When others here laughed, years ago and said “Wait until they reach the workforce, reality will knock the nonsense out of them, nyuck, nyuck, nyuck”. I said it would not work that way. I warned that when that ideology met reality, it was reality that would bend. And it has. It has changed the world.
I warned for decades that deindustrialisation would come back and bite us. Now we complain that Ukraine is using up more ammunition than we can make. I warned that what had eaten footwear, clothing and textiles and was at that time eating manufacturing would not stop there.
I warned it had nothing to do with competitive advantage and everything to do with weakening the West. And here we are. Go to the supermarket. Look at the bacon on the shelves Where is it made? Not here. Not the reasonably priced stuff. Look at the ongoing attempts to destroy agriculture. The farmers who laughed at the closure of local factories and those who taunted “They took our jerbs”, now look down the barrel of the same lunatic forces. Dispite the fact that it was the closure of factories I worked in that amused them, I don’t see their current travails as at all amusing. I don’t think the coming famines are amusing.
I don’t think the destruction of going agricultural concerns is any better than the destruction of our industrial base. I hate that our security relies on the USA. As much as I admire the US, for most of my life we at least maintained the delusion that we would defend ourselves.
The life you would lead under a new Soviet empire, or as a vassal of China would bear no resemblance to what you have now, or even what you will have should we begin the corrective course of backbreaking hard work and hardships required to rebuild our nations.
Those trying to convince you that it would be like living in Moscow or Beijing or even a second tier Chinese city with all the cool new infrastructure are lying, or do not understand how other ethnicities are treated and incorporated into those powers. You would not be a valued Russian or Chinese citizen in that model. You would be the Uighur, or the Tibetan or Chechen. Or worse.
Our leaders are awful. Correct. It would be those same awful leaders acting on behalf of Beijing or Moscow ruling your life.
The West is the best. Fight for it.
I was almost alone in predicting they would steal the election in 2020 once I saw the postal votes numbers in October that year.
And no one seems to have understood that Biden would not step down.
He might become so debilitated that replacing him is unavoidable, but the machine behind him will not do that unless it has to.
You know the difference between our leaders and someone like Putin? Putin seems to actually like Russia and care about its welfare. In this respect, it’d be nice if our leaders felt the same way about the countries they lead.
Incidentally, I have lived in China and have witnessed firsthand the inherent structural problems and contradictions that that country will need to grapple with going forward. I suspect I buy into the glossy brochure version of modern China presented in the West even less than you do.
The West in its traditional strongholds is lost. I’m not saying give up or surrender to despair. I am saying be prepared for what follows, and to rebuild. There are going to be arks of Western civilisation in the world from where it is possible to rebuild, and these will be in central and eastern Europe – and, yes, in Russia.
Now, backing the very people who have ruined our civilisation is not smart. Reflexively opposing the enemies of those people is not smart. Their enemies are not necessarily our enemies.
If Putin really loved Russians, he wouldn’t send so many of them to their deaths in a war of expansion.
..
Maybe. Maybe he loves Russia. We aren’t Russians.
..
I didn’t know you had lived in China.
Do you speak mandarin?
No to speaking Mandarin.
I agree that we aren’t Russian and should not expect Putin to love us. But then again, that wasn’t my point.
Was your point that Australian leaders should be more like Putin? But that seems not to line up with your reluctance (which I generally agree with) to not involve us in wars.
I mean, if our leaders were the perfect mirror of Putin, Ukraine would be like the Korean War with US troops on the ground in contact with the Russians.Our lot are being very, very careful to tip toe around, unlike during the 20th century.
My point was that there was a time when Western leaders at the very least manifested a desire for their own countries to prosper, that their own countrymen should advance, and these were their first priorities. I see Putin manifests this towards Russia and Russians. It is a characteristic that I wish Australian leaders manifested towards Australians, yet they do not and have not done so for many years. It is the same for all liberal Western democracies – our leaders uniformly are concerned governing to benefit themselves, the other members of their ruling caste and their global peers. It is a good part of the reason why the West is lost.
So no, I do not want Putin to be leader of Australia or any nonsense like that. I think Putin is a good leader of Russia, however. I think he earned a great deal of credibility from ordinary Russians for what they see as his actions in leading their country out of the chaotic and catastrophic 1990s, for taking the country back from the foreign and domestic looters who were expropriating anything of value from the carcass of the Soviet Union, and for restoring a sense of social normalcy and stability. I think their view of Putin is largely correct, and I would probably also place a great deal of faith in him if I were Russian and lived through those times.
I get the feeling he loves the idea of Russia. A powerful and dominating Russia where the nations on his borders are a glacis plate that wars are fought on – not the Russia he wants to survive.
Dutton’s tweet this morning:
What a load of twaddle. Is he proposing SMRs or big-arse traditional plants? Nine SMRs would be a drop in the ocean, and not make a dent in our 2050 energy requirements.
None of it makes any sense at all, except to muddy the waters on behalf of his billionaire donors.
Everything you’ve written is ‘twaddle’, Nazi. You talk about ‘billionaire donors’ but the truth is you don’t mind those billionaires who adhere to your pathetic leftist ideology, names such as Andrew Forrest and Simon Holmes a Court.
mUntyfa continues to “muddy the waters on behalf of his billionaire” maaaates, sucking the reliability out of our electricity generation system.
As opposed to Simon H’AC, Twiggy etc, if even true.
Moron.
The Chinese don’t think it’s twaddle Monty.
I thought lefties just loved the Chinese…?
Todays talking points would have necessitated printing out the entire 3 page document to fit the action plan in.
Perhaps PM Pekingese should cease fighting Torries and instead fight Pallies?
He’s too dependent on the Mooslime votes in Western Sydney.
Why would he when Tories don’t hit back?
Rebel News HQ:
Come meet Tommy Robinson LIVE in Canada!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-75pXg7zfoE
Nazi salute and public display of symbols to be punishable by up to five years in prison in proposed WA laws
Premiers office assures me that the legislation is restricted to the Nazi salute and display of Nazi symbols, it won’t extend to Hamas banners and chants of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be free. “
South Australia Energy minister:
Same applies for pretty much all of the locations Dutton proposed. His policy is DOA.
More twaddle from the Nazi.
All that farmland you want to cover in crappy turbines and transmission lines is currently being used for farming. But one ‘green’ cement factory, oh no, we better not disrupt that!
Turbines and solar panels have a long history of deployment in existing farmland without disrupting it. Livestock enjoy the shade, and the pasture grows just as well.
Tell that to Farmer Gez, mOnty.
Farmer Gez has a skill issue.
That’s a good one. Farms are higher tech than most IT industries, software and hardware both. Plus they actually have to make things rather than run fantasy sports websites.
Stop displaying your gross ignorance, even I am embarrassed for you.
Infrasound. Bird and bat fatalities in the millions. Catastrophic real estate price collapses. If that isn’t disruption then I don’t know what is. As Gez told you he can’t operate his standard farm machinery since the wires are too low.
Sorry, Monty, you are out of your depth, here. Obviously you cannot crop canola, oats, lucerne or any damn fodder cereal for humans or livestock when the damn paddock is covered in solar panels!
So what are we left with? Pasture for cattle or sheep? Well, cattle are totally unsuitable for stocking solar farms for many reasons – including sun deprived growth of grass, and potential damage to solar infrastructure (if you don’t believe me I have seen structures that weigh a ton being damaged for “itchy” cattle between the seasons.). I don’t have info on sheep, but I suspect that the same restrictions occur re pasture.
Now I have also been talking to a farmer whose cows’ health have been influenced by damn turbines. Now, you may think it is a joke. It is not. The low frequency of the turbines seems to have a disturbing effect on cows, as it does on humans. Successful pregnancy rates have fallen in his herd.
You are spouting a load of bullshit, Vicki. Farmers moan and complain about everything under the sun. Tell it to the other one, it’s got bells on.
Vicki lives on a farm and runs cattle, M0nty. She grew up on a farm with horses and lives now on her farm in a farming community. The only farmers your Labor ‘lot’ know are what we used to call Pitt Street Farmers, people with rural tax havens, in recent times Labor lawyers with vineyards, and now, God help us, as per the Australian Magazine this weekend, coalitions of greenwashed ‘doctors etc’ purchasing good farmland to deliberately ‘re-wild’ it.
LOL. Is this anything like governments ramming through legislation to force the construction of wind turbines and solar panels on farmland in face of local objections?
Maybe you lot should’ve thought about that before getting your confiscational commie jackboots on. Turnabout is a female dog ain’t it Monty?
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
So Dutton bangs on and on and on about SMRs but then announces zero SMRs, and no investment in infrastructure to build SMRs?
Completely unserious.
Let me see Monty.
If Labor keep building renewables with gas turbine backup they will be producing how much CO2 per year?
If Dutton builds nuclear power plants instead how much CO2 will that produce a year?
Your answer son will determine whether or not you are a hypocrite.
Under the Dutton plan, emissions from extending coal plants in the next fifteen years (minimum) would greatly outweigh theoretical savings from nukes in our lifetimes, Bruce.
Dutton’s nuke plants have 0% likelihood of ever being built, in any case, so any comparison is moot.
ROFL. You do realise, don’t you, that Labor is already extending coal fired power plants. They’re even paying for that. And at the same time they are refusing planning permission for LNG import terminals, thereby forcing the coal plants to continue?
You really are amazingly ignorant Monty. We at this moment are generating about 20% of electricity from renewables. And it’s a good day for wind and solar. It’s usually less than this. How long is it going to take to build another 4 times that? And then all the backup gas turbines for windless cloudy days?
Pollies hate blackouts, that sort of thing gets them turfed out of office.
Those ‘renewable’ installations need regular renewing, far more than the far less fragile and far more permanent facilities of major power stations, whatever energy drives them. And then we have to dispose of the masses of old and dangerous garbage from each regular renewal of panels and turbines – oh, and those turbines use a lot of oil, yes oil, in order to keep turning smoothly. Plus not factored in properly is the cost of constantly ‘renewing’ this breakable and unstable infrastructure of ‘renewables’ and their transmission lines across bushfire and cyclone regions – such infrastructure which we will of course still purchase from China, far more cheaply than we could ever manufacture panels and turbines here in Albo’s bold new ‘manufacturing’ industry: lol, us as a ‘renewables’ super-power. He’s dreaming.
The daily lefturd talking points seem to be even more incoherent than usual today.
SMR’s can be left to the private sector to fund as appropriate in areas not well serviced by traditional grids, or in specific industries or businesses. They are not all that expensive, however in the current situation in Australia we need full-on baseload for the national grid. There is also a huge, and growing, waiting list for purchase of SMR’s – many countries want them, especially developing countries without much of a national grid. We don’t have that time to waste before getting started on a serious energy transition to nuclear. I hope, in time, when the climate cult has lost its electoral grip, that we can also consider some of those sites for new coal-fired power stations too. Coal is still king of the world.
There’s something in common between these two stories. I wonder what it is?
Doctor Who: New Ratings Low: Worst In 60-Year History: Fails On Disney+ (18 Jun)
Nolte: Lesbian Witches Drive Disney’s ‘Acolyte‘ to Another Record-Low Audience Score (18 Jun)
How could Star Wars and Dr Who suddenly become so unpopular? It’s a mystery!
Zali Steggall doesn’t know what you are talking about, Bruce. She very right on with all of the transitioning and related stuff, talking down her opponent Katherine Deves’ very reasonable concerns about mutilating little children in the name of saving them. Vote for mutilating little children. What a nightmare set of ideological idiocies she was supporting in the last Federal election. I hope Stellgall’s opponent reminds her of that in the next election, waving copies of the Cass Report at her. How many children were mutilated and their normal sexual puberty stolen under your careless and uniformed watch, Zali?
SBS has announced itself to have been voted ‘Australia’s most trusted news source’.
OK, good. Voted by whom?
Sky of course is down the bottom.
Hang on, I was told that Their ABC is ‘Australia’s most trusted news source’.
Which of this pair of taxpayer funded leeches is lying? Or are both lying?
The University of Canbra formerly Mickey mouse college of advanced ejucashun. Say no more.
Zali Steggall LOL:
Australia doesn’t have a coherent Government under Albanese, either.
Chicken Little is chasing imaginary climate fairies. That’s all you need to know about her “serious, responsible and realistic economic policy for Australia”.
?
Windmills for Wahringah. You know it makes sense, Zali.
I think she’s rather begging the question on “serious realistic economic policy.”
Prove it.
Neither should occur, certainly not in the present political climate, because the Schmittian exception will largely favour the other side.
Quoting Zali Steggal
Priceless.
Was actually thinking along your lines.
LOL she should talk about coherent…
Same here!
SBS has announced itself to have been voted ‘Australia’s most trusted news source’.
Chuckle.
Last time I looked at the ratings they were also Australia’s least watched news source.
Tits, soccer and Nazis.
And it’s hilarious that nuclear, an established technology used around the world is now a Boogie man for so called greenies.
Apparently reverting to third world living conditions is what all the cool kids yearn for.
I vote that when load shedding becomes a reality all households with climate action now placards are the first to get their power turned off.
I think the Milko has moved in. The munted one is more unhinged, if that is possble, than usual. Like all good lefties he failed comprehension. No doubt mathematics as well to be followed by Econ 101. A few weeks was all it took. That Eureka moment, “I haven’t got a effing clue”. Probably the only accurate thought he’s ever had. Still, he is consistent, consistently wrong. What a maroon. Even Bugs Bunny got it right. This place is probably the only place anyone pays attention to him, even if only to point out how stupid he is.
What is traffic like on either of his two blogs?
So because this dummy doesn’t agree with the direction Dutton is taking the party, this means it’s an incoherent opposition? What a fool.
The reality is that Dutton’s the most effective leader of a party elected off the back of losing government at the previous election in recent memory. The opposition is in fact surprisingly coherent under Dutton, to the extent that he may well be the next Prime Minister. Anyone who isn’t a partisan mouth breather would acknowledge this reality even if it doesn’t exactly fill them with joy.
Here’s a fact, if we want to pursue the lunacy of net zero emissions then the only option for reliable cheap energy IS nuclear.
Quoting Steggles is very low energy. Sad.
Luckily Sky counterbalanced their panel on nuclear matters just now. Eamonn Fitzpatrick would fit right in at MSNBC or CNN. Sky needs to be careful how far down full retard lefty disinformational garden path they want to go. David Gazard provided a sensible counterweight, but really, we don’t watch Sky to get what we could get for free from most of the MSM.
I get 95% of my daily news from here. For free. (Well apart from a little regular contribution, which no doubt nearly all of you are matching. 🙂 )
And the information is only marred by Monty who is subsidised by China to be an irritant that can’t be scratched.
He’ll be rolling in it after todays efforts – I wonder how much he gets paid for the traffic?
What you get for free in the MSM airwaves is worth exactly what you paid for it. Which is why blogs like New Catallaxy or The Currency Lad and other centre right social media are informing more and more people.
A few dollars tossed in the right direction can always help these blogs survive, btw.
SA Labor is currently demolishing the heritage-listed police barracks and horse facilities to make way for the $3 billion new Women’s and Children’s Hospital and having to rebuild those police facilities elsewhere at a cost of $125 million plus. But oh noes, you can’t build a nuclear plant at Port Augusta because ‘green’ (LOL) cement factory!
Cassie, you make a sound point that bears repeating and further elaboration: there are good reasons to develop nuclear energy generation in Australia. Reducing our carbon emissions isn’t one of them.
Yep, as I and some others have also been reiterating here, always adding the rider to our support for nuclear power that coal-fired power would do the same job just as well, as it has always done. Belief in the climate hoax is driving the nuclear push, and during the time we are politically stuck with that we have to build nuclear, so great has been the indoctrination of the voting public into the CO2 scare (with a new generation of indoctrinees arising). Nuclear is ideal base-load power as it has no emissions at all except steam, whereas coal has gaseous and particulate emissions as well as steam. CO2 doesn’t matter but living next to a coal-fired plant can upset some asthmatics.
Will the last lefty leaving the no-nukes bus please turn out the lights? Looking at you Monty.
Bill Gates’ great $1B commitment to nuclear energy should be a wake-up call to climate progressives (18 Jun)
Couldn’t the nuclear power plants sell carbon credits in advance? Carbon credits are only paper instruments, after all, so a futures market can exist. Isn’t that what all that “green finance” was about?
Just don’t purchase them with anybody’s superannuation.
Dutton literally said today that the correct number is 37% renewables. You are no good at this Bruce. Put the clown nose down.
The Nazi has nothing coherent to say.
If he wasn’t a Nazi, I would pity him.
And you literally believe him !
Monty, I could add up the numbers on that AEMO energy site without needing a calculator. I told you what it was, live and at that particular time. The AEMO data is saved into a ginormous spreadsheet every 5 minutes and there are many apps that visualize it. That happens to be my favourite one.
I also look at the data reasonably often. I would say 15% is more the usual. Oftentimes it is 1% with adverse weather for renewables.
Next time (a) read what I wrote and (b) examine the data I provide. You make yourself look even more ignorant by objecting to the actual real data. Who should I believe, you or my lying eyes?
So you are calling Dutton a liar. Interesting.
Talking about a different day, perhaps? Or is that concept too difficult for a top j’ismist?
I am not calling Dutton a liar since I only have your comment about what he said. Given your track record this morning of being approximately 100% wrong about everything I have this suspicion about your assertion.
Plus I gave you the real time data at the point I made the comment. Perfectly accurate since it is the official data from the official energy market operator. And it is a sunny day with pretty good wind. Do your sums. Ok don’t bother with that, from my direct experience you are utterly useless at sums, science, engineering or anything approaching actual reality.
The 37% number is in Dutton’s tweet that I already posted in this thread today, Bruce. Do keep up.
That’s the things about ruinables dickless.
They can be 37% one minute and 0% the next.
Steggles is proof is Mosman really is the place where your brain goes to die.
And Hawthorn, but it was already to late for mutley.
See also Harold Scruby, president (for life) of the very pedestrian council.
Nonsense. The late Australian columnist Malcolm Colless was a Mosmanite. He was a wonderful observer of politics.
I lived in Mosman when I first moved from Mt. Druitt in 1960.
Oh, the culture shock!!!!!!!!!!!!
A fast learning curve too. I was seventeen and had just started working in advertising as a typist. I quickly became a copywriter. Talk about Peggy in Mad Men.
I see the Cat hot takes of “state-owned enterprise is actually based conservatism” have already started, LOL.
No different that what is going on now, the market is totally government controlled. I’d much prefer to go back to a free market.
You know what that would do Monty? Coal plants.
We should, agriculture would love it. And since CO2 does very little there’s no reason why we shouldn’t.
No, at the moment the market is largely owned by China. You would rather drop all regulation and let them run the show?
Monty are you dim?
The electricity market is utterly at the mercy, or lack of, of government policy. It is not a free market. If it was a free market we’d still be paying 10c/kWh, and Victoria would be raking it in because they can generate electricity for 2c/kWh from brown coal.
I almost wish China was in control of our electricity market since Chinese retail electricity is US 8c/kWh.
Why is that Monty? Could it be because they burn more coal for electricity generation than all the rest of the world put together?
And have lots of nuclear plants?
It would be because the Chinese economy is centrally controlled. I don’t think they are the John Galt gigachads of free market libertarianism you seem to think they are.
Um Monty our economy is also centrally controlled in most respects, if you hadn’t already noticed. Ask SATP about all the permits he has to get to try and run a business.
The biggest difference is that China doesn’t believe in climate fairies. Nor Rainbow Serpents or lesser spotted newts. Russia and India also don’t.
Plus their universities churn out lots of actual scientists and engineers and very few gender studies graduates.
If you admire China so much, go and live there.
Enjoy the smog.
mUntfa is too stupid to even read budget papers to see how roads, hospitals et al are funded.
Dumb even by the lax standards of j’ismists who failed Economics 1.
I’ve discovered from whence muntsac receives his talking points.
Little Lord Fauntleroy no less.
Unsurprising.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13544919/Peter-van-onselen-dutton-nuclear-announcement.html
The idea that a policy (zero emissions) put in place to wreck the West’s industries and upturn the world order through disrupting energy markets, could incorporate a workable nuclear solution is illogical.
You don’t spend decades putting in place a nation wrecking policy just to mitigate it’s destructive power at the last hurdle.
If you are for reducing human emissions you are for reducing humans.
Kaboom!
—–
Steve Inman:
Social Media vs Reality
https://rumble.com/v52cccs-social-media-vs-reality.html
Now THAT was funny!
Well done to this Jury.
I hope Charlize’ spirit can now rest.
I pray that her mother develops a rotting skin disease, and that her murderer is placed into General Population in prison.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13515537/Justin-Stein-verdict-Guilty-murder-schoolgirl-Charlise-Mutten.html
The Victorian government announces a truth-telling process for victims of abuse in state schools. Who would have thought?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-19/victorian-government-responds-to-beaumaris-sexual-abuse-inquiry/103994094
Not possible. We were assured that there was absolutely no such abuse.
Cynic that I am, my initial thought was that Danger Dan must need something else to get his name off the front pages.
Regarding Dr Mutton and his “Chernobyl in every backyard” announcement, is the squawking of the usual suspects audible in space yet?
Of course not Rabz – In Space You Can’t Hear the Farts. Or Smell Them Either.
Now now, go easy on m0nts. He’s a dim bulb who would comfortably get by with a hamster running on a wheel connected to a tiny generator. Of course he finds all of this talk of reliable baseload power supply laughably absurd.
Poor Kieran Gilbert!
He’s so conflicted by the nuclear policy of the coalition.
Keeps making the sort of dubious noises he wouldn’t ever say about Labor’s dodgy energy and EV ones.
I would rather garden than watch Sky during the day.
Even if they wouldn’t know if their house sized backsides were ablaze.
A state owned riddle for Monty.
Chinese company builds a wind project in Western Vic.
All the materials are Chinese sourced and most of the building and operational staff. Direct support mechanisms and some subsidies are paid by the taxpayer and all income is derived from domestic power users with the profits derived from government mandated regulated returns then going back to Chinese investors.
Belt & Road by any other name.
Hey Cassie, if you are around, a lovely clip of an Israeli woman and her dog on America’s Got Talent. Simply beautiful.
Hat Tip to Michael Smith.
https://x.com/AustralianJA/status/1803004586887975252#m
It’s time Sky found someone less blatantly left-leaning than Kieran to anchor their daily daytime political coverage. The way he keeps plugging away in a biased fashion is rather off-putting.
Instead of paying for Sky News we could get that sort of lefty spin almost anywhere else for free.
An excellent suggestion, BB, but it’s currently not possible as a conga line of green left armchair revolutionaries is 100% of the graduates of Australia’s university journalism courses.
J-school graduates are like Hamas fighters in Gaza: kill one and 100 are ready to replace him.
That very much depends on the nature of the enterprise, the capital required and the service provided.
If there were no state-owned hospitals, for example, the uninsured majority would be unable to access treatment. How would that serve the interests of the nation?
When we needed railways to get wheat, wool and minerals to port the colonial governments were the only entities large enough to take on the investment.
You see, conservatism is pragmatic, not ideological. There is no dogma that the state shouldn’t own enterprises, but rather a practical attitude that the state should only do so when it’s clearly in the public interest and the private market can’t or won’t step up to provide the public good.
That line would be believable Roger, if the last forty years of neoliberalism hadn’t happened.
Your sudden rediscovery of Menzian nation-building regarding nukes is a great departure from recent rhetoric from the right around Snowy 2.0 and the NBN.
LOL, mUntyfa still hasn’t notices that the progenitor of Snowy is, like Cannon-Balls, Holmes a’C and the other parasites, a subsidy harvester of a lefturd inclination. And only a socialist would have neglected to check the geological issues.
As for the NBN, the back of the drinks coaster was completely unnecessary, the results would have come faster and cheaper from private investment.
The problem is sovereign risk. Liars governments pandering eg to potential Greens voters and other morons just cannot be trusted not to destroy the country to get at their ideological enemies.
Miltonf
June 19, 2024 9:34 am
Why limit yourself to Oxford?
Any philosophy doctorate is a wank and a waste of time unless you intend to teach it to the next generation of pretentious suckers.
A doctorate necessitates an original piece of research. That is an end in itself. In my discipline that was the case – although that was a long time ago & these days I suppose it is a requirement of tertiary teaching.
In STEM it is also pretty much necessary if you want to go into R&D, which I really wanted to do. It’s been fun!
Even STEM is now fully compromised though. Glad I’m not 40 years younger.
Some fifty years ago, a nuclear physicist I worked with described a PhD as a moderately intelligent person with a couple of years free. And that was when some rigour was required to get one. Now …
He preferred to work in the real world.
Correct Arky.
I have no issues with nuclear power but leftists cannot be placated – you either destroy them or they destroy you.
Say whatever you need to say to get elected and then treat leftists the same way they treated the unvaccinated.