News

Two of the country’s biggest companies have raised major concerns about the Albanese government’s second tranche of workplace relations reforms, warning restrictions on casuals and labour hire could disrupt their business.

17 February 2023. Ambassador to Japan expresses energy concerns.

The events of the past few weeks have brought Australia’s energy future into sharp focus – we won’t have one. Green enthusiasts who dominate the public debate have insisted that much of the east coast’s reliable power supply must cease operating by about the middle of next decade, but there may not be anything to put in its place. Those same activists insist that a vast network of renewable energy projects can take over the role of coal plants, ignoring considerable evidence that they cannot. However, state governments are relying on private investors to create this dense network, despite investment in the area having tanked. This heroic attempt at ruining Australia’s power supply is all the more remarkable for occurring during an international energy crisis and with the policymakers apparently oblivious to the notable failure of renewable energy to make much of a contribution to the overall energy supply, despite decades of investment.

Japan, which has sunk many tens of billions of dollars into projects here, is horrified by Australia’s suicidal madness. Its Prime Minister rushed here to ask Albanese to promise not to disrupt Japan’s supplies.

Mr Sugahara, who is chief executive and chairman of the Japanese trading giant’s Australian operations, is the first representative of a major Asian buyer of LNG to voice concern over the proposed changes. He has previously made clear that Japan will need a secure supply of LNG from Australia for decades to come, and also anticipates Australia will be a major source of supply of low-carbon ammonia, which is expected to be crucial for the decarbonisation of Japanese industry. “While I have no intention to intervene in domestic politics, I take the position that government intervention in markets can have unintended consequences,” he told The Australian Financial Review when asked about the ADGSM reforms. “From a Japanese corporate perspective, I am personally concerned that short-term interventions may jeopardise business practices which have been built over the long term.”

Senex chief executive Ian Davies, in a blunt submission to the government’s gas market consultation that closed last week, urged Labor to avoid crashing the industry as it scrambles to meet demand in coming years.
“Senex’s EOI process demonstrates there is no market failure for gas supply from 2025 and therefore no case for heavy-handed and enduring market intervention,” he wrote.

“I didn’t know anyone other than my family in this huge country I now called home.” After finishing high school in Bunbury, Ms Farquhar became the first member of her family to attend a university UWA. After four years in management consulting, she took a FIFO job at Rio Tinto where she worked on the Hope Downs project Rio co-owns with Dalkeith billionaire Gina Rinehart. “Being a young female certainly had its challenges,” she said.

The Albanese government’s intervention in the national energy market has come under a withering attack from the country’s peak oil and gas group, which says the decision has already repelled vital investment in Australia and will lead to further economic pain in the form of energy price hikes. Speaking to the senate select committee on the cost of living on Friday, Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association chief executive Samantha McCulloch said Senex Energy’s decision to suspend its $1bn Atlas expansion project in Queensland was a sign of things to come following December’s price cap. She added that longstanding investors in Australia such as Japan had begun to look to the Middle East for more reliable investment conditions. Ms McCulloch said it was “particularly chilling” from an industry perspective that under the intervention, prices could be set arbitrarily by the regulator as opposed to the market.

IT takes a monstrous stupidity – a religious mania – for Australians in this gas-rich country to run short of gas from as soon as two years from today. Sure enough, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission now predicts that somewhere between 2024 and 2034 our southern states will have just half the gas they need. Oh, and that’s the best case.

Mining companies have warned about closures and damaging ­impacts on exports, competitiveness and regional economies if they are forced to move too ­quickly under a new safeguard mechanism designed to achieve Labor’s 2030 and 2050 emissions-­reduction targets. Miners, who helped deliver an $11.5bn budget improvement since October on the back of ­surging exports, have called on Labor and the Coalition to secure long-term investment certainty through bipartisan agreement on the safeguard mechanism.

Gas producer Senex Energy has pulled about $200 million of purchase orders for its stalled Atlas project in Queensland, sources close to the company say, as evidence firms of investment drying up after last month’s gas market intervention by the Albanese government. The move by Senex, owned by South Korean steel giant Posco alongside Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Energy, comes as Cooper Energy put a proposed gas project under review off Victoria, citing the shock move to effectively regulate market prices on the east coast on an ongoing basis.