Media release – Guy Barnett, Premier and Guy Barnett, Minister for Energy and Renewables,, 3 March 2023
Powered by Tasmania – a remarkable, renewable future
Tasmania is 100 per cent self-sufficient in renewable electricity and was the first Australian jurisdiction to achieve net zero emissions, and has done so for the past seven years.
“Tasmania’s renewable status would not have been possible without the ingenuity and courage of thousands of Tasmanians and also workers from different countries – engineers, designers, innovators, and leaders,’’ Premier Rockliff said.
“Today, the Tasmania Liberal Government launches Phase 1 of a multi-stage campaign. A visual cinematic advertisement depicting Tasmania’s rich renewable history – where the journey began and where it’s going.
“For Tasmania to continue to stay years ahead of other jurisdictions we must continue to prosper. The state needs more renewable electricity to put downward pressure on prices, secure our energy security, provide for the demand our growing economy and future industries need and continue our zero emissions status.’’
It’s important that the state’s rich renewables past isn’t lost and that Tasmanians understand the benefits and our vision for the future – a vision that can help all Tasmanians, and in fact all Australians.
“The Tasmanian Government’s vision is to increase renewable energy generation to 200 per cent of our current needs by 2040. We are the renewables powerhouse of Australia and we intend to remain there,’’ Minister Barnett said.
“Growth of our state’s renewable sector requires strategic planning and coordination to harness our renewable energy potential and to secure a sustainable and clean energy future.
“More energy means more jobs. By getting more renewable power into the network, Tasmania will continue to have amongst the lowest power prices in the nation.
“The campaign intends to help viewers to understand the path of renewables in Tasmania and to encourage them to look deeper and acknowledge and embrace where this path is going,’’ Minister Barnett said.
Learn more at www.tasmanian.com.au/powered.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Rockliff is (currently still) the Premier but we couldn’t help reproducing the (Freudian) slip as is.
Featured comment – Ben Marshall, Loongana resident, 9 March 2023
— untitled —
What’s incredible isn’t just that Minister Barnett continues to make the same untrue statements about the energy sector (which his party and TasNetworks are handing to the market for a cut) but that there are no politicians or media in Tasmania who can be bothered to call him out. Selling off Tasmania and exploiting Tasmanians is just business-as-usual in this corrupt little corner of the world.
This latest round of taxpayer millions spent on PR spruiking a private, for-profit industry, is par for the course as TasNetworks drops a casual million on influencers and tens of millions on a four-year long PR campaign to buy social license for the proposed new grid that will connect foreign renewables companies to the mainland market via the Marinus Link. Barnett is merely repeating that black is white and night is day by claiming benefits accrue to our state.
TasNetworks’ total conflict of interest – that they materially benefit from the plans they’re forcing on our state – is matched by Minister Barnett’s conflict of interest in not mentioning that the same plan (Project Marinus) materially benefits his government. The ongoing claims of jobs and growth, downward pressure on power prices and greenwashing about helping the mainland transition are nonsense, and no one believes them other than the politicians and PR grifters paid to spruik them.
But it doesn’t matter as long as the media keep reporting them and politicians repeat them. I doubt the Minister is ever troubled by things like truth when PR provides a soothing balm. I mean, it could be true, couldn’t it? There’ll be a few jobs after the FIFO construction workers have covered our north in windfarms and a vast spiderweb of high voltage overhead transmission lines. Spraying herbicide on the 60-90 metre-wide easements, perhaps?
Politicians have given up on policy. Everything the Minister repeats here is pure PR formed via consultancies and focus groups. Evidence-based policy simply doesn’t happen in Tasmania, especially in the energy sector.
This new PR, promising benefits, is actually cover for a naked cash grab by TasNetworks and its sole shareholder, the state government. It’s a stealth tax but without any benefits for the Tasmanian people. Instead, all the costs are imposed on landholders and communities as forests and farms are bulldozed for transmission lines and small tourism businesses close their doors on an industrialised landscape.
Liberal politicians are as happy with this as they are to help their corporate mates. Labor politicians are happy to dream that one day the TasNetworks and Hydro efficiency dividends (hundreds of millions of dollars in some of the highly speculative projections) will be theirs if they ever win an election.
The media simply acts as stenographers with no one holding the government to account. Barnett could save money and not bother with this latest bit of cinematic fluff, but instead they’ll railroad us and hand our wind energy to foreign renewables companies regardless of whether we give them social license to do so or not.
