Rita Panahi on Victoriastan:

Victoria’s constitution was changed back in 2021 and we’re all the poorer for it.

Victoria is sitting on abundant reserves of gas that should be enriching the state and its citizens. We should be the beneficiaries of cheap, reliable energy plus significant royalties to pay down the state’s enormous debt, the highest in the nation by some margin.

Victoria’s debt will hit a crippling $188bn by 2027-28, making our humble state among the worst performers anywhere in the advanced world, according to ratings agency Standard and Poor’s.

Instead of bleeding long suffering taxpayers through skyrocketing land tax and payroll taxes, the state government could be reaping enormous sums through further gas exploration. That money could be used to pay down debt and provide essential services.

But alas in their infinite wisdom, suicidally stupid state politicians from the Dan Andrews government together with certain feckless, easily spooked members of the opposition, combined to change the Victorian constitution making fracking illegal.

The Fracking Ban Bill 2020 passed in March 2021, with Victoria’s Constitution amended to not only ban fracking but to ensure that no future state government could reverse this idiotic ban, not without changing the constitution first which requires a super or special majority.

To reverse this self-harming policy a future government would need to secure a three-fifths majority of both houses. Good luck to any future Coalition government that believes it can secure those numbers in either house, let alone both.

It was an abuse of the parliament to enshrine a policy decision, a daft one at that, into the state’s Constitution thereby preventing future duly elected governments from making a policy change in line with their mandate. A point lost on then Minister for Resources Jaclyn Symes, now the state’s clueless treasurer, who boasted of the world first folly of the Andrews government. “No other government in the world has gone as far as enshrining a coal seam gas and fracking ban in their constitution,” she said.

One of the MPs who stood against the constitutional amendment, Liberal MP Bev McArthur, argues the entrenchment were misused. “Our constitution is not a political plaything, to be altered whenever the government of the day seeks to score political points,” she said.

Renowned geologist and author Professor Ian Plimer has lambasted the Victorian government for its anti-fracking stance pointing out that there are deep shales in the Otway and Gippsland basins that are ideal for fracking and well away from any population centres.

“There is naturally fracked gas in the Wombat gas field of Gippsland, five wells flow gas and it is not connected to the pipelines,” Prof Plimer told the Herald Sun.

“It is very clean gas with no carbon dioxide and no mercury. If connected to a pipeline, much of the pressure would lift from Victoria’s undersupply.” Prof Plimer also points out that old oil and gas fields, including Bass Strait, have additional reserves which can be released by fracking.

Victoria is potentially sitting on hundreds of years of gas reserves.

Any prohibition of gas exploration is economically reckless at the best of times, but particularly disastrous during a period where the state is grappling with record debt, soaring energy costs and looming supply issues.

And yet they most likely will stay in power due to the state Coalition being rather useless.
Poor fella my country.

@RCMaxw3ll

India broke from its BRIC alliance saying they have “no interest” in joining Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian attempts to “undermine” the U.S. dollar.

Thank you @narendramodi!

@EricLDaugh

Trump has cut off Russian oil sales to the European Union.

President Donald Trump ended the Biden policy that allowed sanctioned Russian banks to process EU payments for oil.

Huge blow to Russia as they shy away from temporary ceasefire and insist on “long term” settlement only.

@DavidSacks

“The events in Romania represent a new and fateful step for Western societies that claim to be liberal and democratic. Elites no longer limit themselves to influencing electoral outcomes through media manipulation, censorship, lawfare, economic pressure, and intelligence operations. When these fail to achieve the desired result, they are increasingly willing to discard the formal structures of democracy altogether, including elections. Therefore, what transpired in Romania should be seen as a warning sign of what may soon unfold elsewhere. Indeed, Breton openly stated that similar actions could be taken elsewhere—he was referencing Germany—if populists were at risk of winning the elections.”
– Thomas Fazi @battleforeurope
“How Democracy Died in Romania”

@theMRC

BREAKING MRC REPORT: The Biden Administration Waged War on Free Speech with 57 Censorship Initiatives.

This is the roadmap for the Trump administration to eliminate the censorship cartel within the federal government.

opinion

Brian Burke: Mark McGowan’s massive mistakeBrian BurkeThe West Australian
Fri, 14 March 2025 2:00AM

Comments

Most people of a certain age will have heard of General Jubilation T Cornpone. He’s the tactical wizard who burnt the crops and left his troops with nothing to eat. And General Jubilation T Cornpone must surely have been the brains behind the Labor Party think tank that thought through and brought forth the new electoral laws that made such far reaching changes to the Legislative Council.
After 120 years of electoral defeat, Labor won control of the Upper House for the first time in 2021 in the biggest landslide in Australian political history.
Then-premier Mark McGowan promised not to change our electoral laws. But within a year or so he and his intrepid attorney general John Quigley knocked off developing a theory of relativity to announce far reaching changes that made General Cornpone look clever.
The McGowan Government managed to:
Ensure that the Labor Party will never again control of the Upper House;
Guarantee that minor parties and independents would find it easier to be elected and to have the balance of power;
Move to disenfranchise the country and regional WA with parties required to nominate a State wide slate of candidate that will inevitably compound and amplify the drift of power to Perth; and
Make sure that the handful of country seats with Labor members turned conservative when they were enlarged to meet the one vote, one value hurdle.
Contrary to what Mr McGowan maintained when he said the proposed changes would make it much more difficult for single issue candidate to win seats in the council, the opposite is the case.
The Legalise Cannabis Party is a case in point. It won two seats after preference flows and most observers thought that undesirable.
Well, guess what? Legalise Cannabis retained its representation and has now been joined by One Nation and the Australian Christians. And Legalise Cannabis and One Nation have a very slim chance of picking up a second seat.
So much for making their election more difficult.
Worse still for Labor, the balance of power will be held by the Greens whose leader is already boasting: “We can actually force them (Labor) to the table.” Not that his aggression matters much because Premier Roger Cook says: “It doesn’t matter who has the balance of power”.
Well, it does matter and that will become apparent just as soon as the Greens hold the Cook Government to ransom over the expansion of our natural gas industry or in any one of the myriad of matters where the State’s industrial expansion depends on parliamentary approval.
It beggars belief that a Labor Government could turn its back on the decades of policy commitment to abolish the Legislative Council. And it beggars belief that the changes could overlook the quota requirement that countries insist on then they make changes like this.