Thursday, May 28, 2009

ABC Q&A 28/05/09 - Final, returns in 8 weeks.

Tonight's panelists
Kate Ellis - Minister for Youth and Sport
Brendan Nelson - Former Liberal leader
William McInnes - actor and author
Peter Holmes à Court - businessman
Miriam Lyons - Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Development

I'll be watching this programme and I'll be commenting on it here...

The TV guide says that this is the final programme. Don't know if it's just for 2009 or forever!

So, I'll meet anyone who's interested back here at 9:30pm-ish.

LOLZ
I think I found a fellow blogger's question:
For Kate Ellis
I understand you are engaged to a union official. Why are you apparently so willing to submit to something that the rest of us are so tired of?
Oh, that's sooooo bad!

See you back here later.

OK I'm here.

They're talking about Sol.

Where did Holmes a Court go to school? He was punched in the head as a kid and accused of being a "boong lover".

(I think that Rudd's "Adios" was a "and don't let the door hit you on the arse....")

Sol is a sook.

NEXT!

More about the footy. NEXT!

Clare. NEXT! Racist, bogan... blah, blah, blah. Who the F is Miriam? She's a bit up herself.

Onya, Brendan. Rudd's using Australia's credit card to finance his projects... and we'll be paying for it for 13 years or so.

Are Kate Ellis and the PM {SNIP}, she seems so... starry eyed about him. Ick.

How interesting. Brendan's asked how much he'd be willing to go into debt if in government. HULLO? The ALP is in government, and the opposition has already said that they'd spend on infrastructure.

I like William McInnes... most of the time. I'm pretty sure he's apolitical.

Oh dear, Miriam is upset that Climate Change has been politicised. Um, yeah. Box. Of. Rocks.

Brendan's right about the ETS. Straddling the fence, but he's right. An ETS in Aus will NOT achieve anything as far as reducing CO2, and will send Australia further down the chute.

Why are all these lefty women so daft?

Natural disasters caused by climate change. Arrgh!

Who do these nitwits think will be paying for a carbon tax? Strewth!

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

Peter Holmes a "Cour"
he sure is!

kae said...

Cour

oops, that'd be a cut 'n paste failure.

Taaa!

Mehaul said...

I couldn't watch it with the Labor factory line production Kate Ellis Miss Smugness, career bureaucrat and opportunist throwing her kindergarten lines around with that manufactured everything shining from her facial orifice.

She hasn't worked a day in her life producing anything worthwhile that didn't have its hand in the till.

But she has her snout deeply in the trough awaiting life's later joys at public expense.

She personifies the worse of Adelaide, the career Labor process driven PC female smile machine. Thanks for that. I feel better now. Shame there's no one on the show to take her little mind to task.

kae said...

Never mind Mehaul. I'll watch it tomorrow night and may just liveblog on it.
I've been a bit slack, but I'm not on the road during the news programmes and so I don't hear what's going on. I'll have to start listening to the radio at work, when I get the job sussed out.

Anonymous said...

AAaaahhh..Kate Ellis, proof that bobble head dolls can be taught to speak.

Oh well back to work

Cheers

Carpe Jugulum

Egg said...

McInnis - pffft! - Aunty's gotta have a token 'creative' for balance, what?

Anonymous said...

Mehaul
"Shame there's no one on the show to take her little mind to task"

I deal with a lot of people and I find, it's much harder to argue with stupid individuals, let alone convince them.

Orion

Anonymous said...

Hi kae
is this Holmes a Court the son of or relation to the late HaC?

If he is, the apple rolled a long distance from the father, but not from the mother.
The first poster called him a "cour" (cur)
I think he might have been close to the truth.

Listening to BN, I think the libs made big mistake, albeit being driven to it by the MSM.


Orion

kae said...

I think he is.

Thanks Orion, I thought I was here just flapping my gums with myself!

And I do like William McInnes. I think he said something once which really, really annoyed me. Hmm.

Egg said...

Good to see McInnes playing with straight bat, seems to have a bit more nouce than yer average Yartz type.

kae said...

Hiya, Egg.

I like McInnes.

I loved his end of programme comment on Climate Change....

Very funny. A quick advert for his wife's latest book, "My Year Without Sex"... McInnes's implication was that that was much more important than CC.

I think he's right.

er, what's sex again?

Anonymous said...

what's sex again?
let me know when you find out!

Orion

Skeeter said...

McInnes showed promise a couple of times but he was having trouble staying on track. Reminded me of myself, late at night after a good party.

I think the most important comment tonight was made by Brendon Nelson: Three out four Australians have no idea of how an ETS will affect their ability to pay for energy.
Thanks to AGW scaremongering, the energy cost increases have been happening for some years.
NSW domestic power bills are about to increase by another 20%, and the ETS has still not been passed by the senate.
Please Wand, correct me if I am wrong on this, but I believe that, for some years energy producers in Australia have put all future expansion plans on hold. There's no point in building a new power station if the product is going to be taxed out of the consumers' reach.
If you are in the business of building coal-fired power stations, Australia has become a most unattractive place to do it. And that's just from the threat of an ETS. Imagine the effect if the ETS becomes a reality.

Egg said...

'what's sex again?'

'Proof God has a sense of humour'?

Any wymmin I mention that to don't seem to see the yumour in it; likely cos they're not predominantly 'in the jockey's seat', non?

kae said...

"Proof God has a sense of humour."*

Best answer, Egg.

I think that's funny, I've heard it before.

*Particularly as we get older!

WV: womics
it's ESP, huh!

Wand said...

Skeeter some comments for you:

You are mostly correct. However there are some gas power stations that are being constructed right now such as a 720MW open cycle peaking plant adjacent to Munmorah power station in NSW. But that station can only be a peaking power plant because there is insufficient gas to run in continuously and it requires the pipeline that will supply the station to act as a gas reservoir. This station is insurance on the part of Delta Electricity and supposedly will provide some protection for their coal fired base load stations. But who would want to run the station at the price that has to be paid for gas! So a peaking station it has to be that will run when the electricity price is high enough.

When it comes to building new coal-fired power stations, the investment is significant at about $1,500 - $2,000 per kW of installed capacity, so a large station, fitted with say 4 x 660 MW generators would cost $4 billion to $5.3 billion (say that puts Krudds overdraft into perspective doesn’t it?). An investment of this magnitude requires a guaranteed return which could be achieved if, and it’s a big if these days, the station could be sure that it could bid competitively into the electricity market to ensure the station was dispatched at all times. Now enter the ETS from stage left. The Australian ETS is designed to close down coal fired power stations. It may be dressed up in all sorts of rhetoric but the end result will mean that coal fired power will be priced out of the market or forced to close because there will be insufficient permits. And although the ETS still has to start, unless it is scrapped completely it will remain a sovereign risk to any future coal fired power station. Of course it is possible that the world may be entering a period of cool temperatures that could last for some years so that the AGW scam will eventually be seen widely for what it is along with the ETS. However, because so many people have a vested interest in the scam it may still have a lot of life left in it.

Another point worth noting is that in NSW in 2003, the proposed Redbank 2 power station was rejected on the basis that its greenhouse gas emissions would be higher than the state average. National Power (the original developer) who built Redbank 1 initially decided to appeal the decision then decided against it. (Hey - it looks like Babcock and Brown bought Redbank 1 - so no idea who owns it now!). So that ‘policy’ stands - no new coal fired power stations in NSW. Of course the left would say, that’s not necessarily so - carbon capture and storage is possible, etc. but candidly CCS won’t happen unless someone can change the laws of physics and the properties of matter never mind the time required to implement a CCS program. ... continued below

Wand said...

What we have had in NSW and elsewhere in Australia is a mad pursuit to reduce greenhouse gases from power generation that has shackled any reasonable and cost effective expansion of the electricity system. All sorts of appeals are made about all sorts of ‘clean’ power generation technologies none of which can deliver any significant capacity economically or within the required time frame. Meanwhile there are some peaking plants being constructed (and it takes far less time to put in a gas power station than a coal fired one) with the knowledge that the plants will be dispatched for enough time in any year at the right price.

Unless this process is reversed, which would require government legislation to allow coal fired power stations to be built, the end result will see creeping electricity prices as the fuel progressively is switched to high cost gas. Actually I think it is a shocking waste of a premium fuel.

The 20% price increase in NSW to come soon is as a result of a “deathnell” IPART ruling which allowed retailers to increase their prices so that the retailers could raise funds to invest in additional required electricity system infrastructure. Part of this could be seen as a catch up on the time that Bob Carr was NSW Premier because under his government, investment in the electricity grid was pretty well zero.

The ETS would add significantly to costs and will as I have repeatedly said eventually result in rationing as power stations either go bankrupt or are unable to obtain their necessary permits. And permits will be unavailable because of price or because there will not be enough available. The same thing applies to all energy suppliers as well - gas and oil companies. People have no idea or appreciation of how this destructive scheme will ‘work’.

The outcome will not be pretty.

kae said...

Wand:

"The outcome will not be pretty."

You forgot the part about

...and the consumer, and the taxpayer, will be paying for it.

Skeeter said...

Thanks, Wand. It's even worse than I thought.
Have the pollies — especially the federal opposition members — been told about this?
If they know these facts and continue to ignore them, they are just as guilty as the other side in advancing the AGWarmerers' fraud.
Brendon Nelson claimed last night that the Coalition was determined to do what's best for Australia, even if it goes against what the electorate wants.
My impression is that Turnbull is terrified of failure at the next election, and he is adopting the ALP philosophy of "doing whatever it takes" to get re-elected, rather than what's good for the country.
It's time for another letter to my local federal member.

Wand said...

kae,

Of course you are right - the consumer always pays.

And always in the electricity industry any increased costs have been passed on to the consumer, so the costs of all the current greenhouse abatement schemes or demand management schemes or any other compliance regime dreamed up by state governments has been passed through to everyone's electricity account.

But do the people know? I suspect not.

Egg said...

Tks Wand; reality vs the Wong policy, non?

Egg said...

FYI: Recent Q&A Vodcast now available online...

Skeeter said...

Kae, most Queenslanders are probably unaware that they are already subsidising the "greenification" of electricity.
This is not only happening when they pay their power bills and state taxes, but also whenever they pay goods and services taxes on everything they buy.
Origin is subsidising home solar-power generators to the tune of $0.06/kWh and Queensland State Government is adding another $0.44/kWh to the subsidy. And just where does Qld State get most of its money? Good old GST.

Carpe Jugulum said...

Missed Q&A, had to fly to Canberra for work.....i was looking forward to that too.....the blogging not work.Bugger!

Oh well - Kate Ellis, proof that first cousins shouldn't marry

kae said...

Oh God, Carpe, I'm watching ABC at the mo...

Crap! Just saw your avatar - scary shit, man!

Anyway, I'm watching ABC right this minute and it's people bleating on about how many aboriginal people are in prison and how much this costs and how much better off the communities would be if that money was spent on the communities... um, well what SHOULD be done with people who are violent and/or who commit other offences? Let them go, use the money for the communities?
A lot about what the illiterate kids (boys) with bad behaviour need... but not much about what the kids need to do.

You can't help anyone who doesn't want to help themselves.

A lot of talk about culture, the police culture and about how the more arrests the better, and how that culture needs to change.

Too bad about the culture where the kids aren't looked after and given encouragement by parents and other family.

Bugger me. What about the "poor fella me, you owe me, whitey" culture?

cut and paste this link:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/messagestick/ Talking Stick: Law and Justice

Some of what's being said is helpful, but blaming everyone else but yourself for getting into trouble and all your social problems really is a bit beyond the pale.

/rant

This really gets on my wick. Yes, aboriginal people need help, but first they need to stop blaming everyone else for their predicament.

Carpe Jugulum said...

Yep got the link

Unfortunately the culture of wefare dependency is now well entrenched and the victim mentality is learned at an early age. A bit of a waste really when i think of what could these people have become if they got off their bums, got off the grog and tried to achieve something with their lives.

I like the avatar, tried to use one of my fishing photo's but after 5 minutes i went bugger this

cheers