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July 15, 2011
News Ltd frequently claims that its newspapers are an example of balance and objectivity and, they are quick to add, sound ethical journalism.
News Ltd's newspapers are well known for them providing a platform for the denial of climate change, opposition to a carbon tax, hostility to making the polluters pay for the greenhouse emissions that heat up the planet, and their antagonism to using renewal energy. They are also partly responsible for the low standard of public debate on the need for Australia to shift to a low carbon economy. News Ltd basically want the taxpayer to pay the polluters big money to keep on polluting.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, solar panels, Victor Harbor, 2011
So it is a bit of surprise that Dennis Shanahan, their top political reporter who fronts News Ltd's war on The Greens confesses to having installed solar panels on his roof. Its confession time at News Ltd. How then does Shanahan embracing what The Australian rails against?
Well it has nothing to do with clean energy. Shanahan is anxious to inform us of this. He says:
For myself, the outlay, while sizeable, was more modest than many and was directed towards ameliorating my electricity bills in the years ahead when I become a self-funded retiree. Well, the truth of it is I wasn't acting to save the planet and it was arguably against the interests of my grandchildren, who have to have heating during Canberra's chill winters.
To make sure that you get the point Shanahan criticizes the mandatory renewable energy targets (MRET) for market distortion whilst he is taking advantage of the subsidies that enable him to install the photovoltaic solar panels on his roof and the gross (not net) feed-in-tariff offered by the Labor-Green government in the ACT. He adds that South Australia's achievement of a target of 20 per cent renewable energy raises questions about the extent of the sustainable contribution of renewable sources and where those sources can be concentrated in the national grid.
The valid reason for this [the MRET should be scrapped when an ETS comes into force] was that artificial or mandatory targets for renewable energy distort the carbon market and the ability of the national energy supply market to deliver an orderly and cost-effective system for power...What's more, I can afford PV cells to offset my electricity bills but, through the years, the little old lady across the street, the university students renting flats around the corner and my grandchildren's parents, none of whom could afford the cells, will be paying higher prices to offset my offset. That's why I feel grubby doing something legitimate, legal, encouraged, green-friendly and financially helpful for me. It distorts the market and is inequitable.
Shanahan, of course, makes no mention of the variety of government of the R&D and deployment subsidy programs that are to be consolidated under a new agency – the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the Renewable Energy Target (RET) and Small Scale Renewable Energy Scheme. Or that a carbon tax set at $23 is insufficient to drive investment in renewable energy.
He doesn't seem to realize that the state government subsidies have enables pensioners to install small scale solar photovoltaics on their roofs to cut their electricity bills in half ( eg., its very extensive in Victor Habor); or that rising electricity prices are changing his behaviour in that he has decided to decreasing the electricity that he uses from the fossil fuel industry.
Shanahan's objectivity and balance, and his commitment to ethical journalism, is such that it allows him to omit that he is benefiting from the gross feed-in-tariff in the ACT, when everyone else has to work within a net feed-in-tariff.
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The comments on Shanahan's column are hilarious for their contortions to justify the anti-renewable energy stance that is taken to be de rigor for conservatives. An example:
Good conservatives cannot have solar panels on their roofs! Its Labor/Green utopianism! Anyhow climate change is crap. Tony said so.