The day Rennick nailed union boy-cum-Minister over Labor’s renewable energy subsidy scam

LABOR Senator Tim Ayres, who is also Minister for Industry and Innovation and Science, has provided a stunning example of the corrupting effect of power and privilege.

The former union official who allegedly served the interests of manufacturing workers, was caught metaphorically with his pants down when Senator Gerard Rennick repeatedly asked him and a senior public servant why it is that renewable energy suppliers need to be subsidized with Federal Government handouts when Australians are repeatedly told that renewable energy is the cheapest form of electricity.

When Ayres attempted to evade Rennick’s questions, he then reverted to his old bully boy union tactics of pulling rank and began to tell Rennick to basically shut up because he would answer the questions how he wanted to without interruption.

Rennick’s persistence clearly got under the Minister’s skin: “As I said, if you want to shout over the top of me that’s fine, but you won’t get answers to your questions,” he said, displaying body language that reflected rage and an arrogance of power as if to suggest questions were below him.

“Well I’m not getting answers now. I just asked a question,” Rennick shot back, at which stage the committee chairwoman came in to tell Rennick to “ask your questions but please allow the Minister to answer them. It is up to the Minister to choose how he answers the questions …”

Ayres, barely concealing that rage, then reverted to the tired old tactic of saying how badly the former Coalition government handled the energy system. “Four gigawatts out, one gigawatt in,” he said. “That was the result of a decade of people sitting on their hands in terms of energy policy.

“This government has, and I think we’ve traversed some of the detail this morning, I’m not sure whether you were listening or not, Mr (Simon) Duggan (deputy director) is in a position to go through the detail – a significant amount of new capability coming in,” he said, again talking around Rennick’s question.

“Now that requires government leadership, it requires government action. It is anticipated that the cost that is attached between now and 2050 and achieving the government’s targets will largely be met by the private sector,” he blathered on.

Cairns News knows, as do many Australians, the reality is that the cost will be met largely by consumers and the lying Ayres and his party have sold out Australian consumers, business and industry to an expensive and unreliable energy system that will send the Australian economy backwards.

At the hearing Rennick had raised the question of “energy contracts for difference”, that is how much the Commonwealth and NSW governments provide under agreements with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO Services) to effectively underwrite revenue for energy suppliers.

Duggan, a deputy director at the Department of Climate Change, Energy and Water, responded: “In volume terms, the Federal Government is underwriting 32 gigawatts of renewable and storage.”

“What’s the cost of that in dollar terms?” Senator Rennick asked.

“So the cost isn’t disclosed in the budget papers, for the reason that having disclosed the total volume, disclosing the cost would then give you a sense of what the average price would be per gigawatt and effectively that would prejudice the negotiations were we to publish a figure.

“Well, effectively, as I said, what we need to see is highly competitive auctions with the private sector going through the price discovery process and bidding at the lowest possible price,” Duggan responded.

Rennick: “But isn’t that taxpayers’ money you’re using to underwrite renewables?”

“So it sits as a contingent liability on the Commonwealth’s balance sheet,” said Duggan, attempting to water down Rennick’s suggestion.

“So if electricity prices were to fall to a level, wholesale electricity prices would fall to a level below to what an individual proponent had put forward through their tender arrangement as the price, the strike price that they are bidding in at in order to receive underwriting support, then there would be an implication for the Commonwealth Government in terms of payments that would need to be made under those contracts, but at the point where the contracts are set – as I said it’s a contingent liability, it’s a balance sheet.”

Rennick persisted: “Okay, why should the taxpayer have to underwrite the private sector, given that we’re constantly told by the government that renewables are cheaper? … Maybe you can answer this Minister (Ayres), but why does the Federal Government, the taxpayer, have to underwrite privately-owned energy providers?”

At this point Ayres came in with an outpouring of duplicitous “polispeak”. “Well I think I might let Mr Duggan answer on the detail about what the, ah, mobilising principles are under the CIS and the way that incentives are structured to deliver the fastest possible rollout of the lowest cost.”

Rennick: “Why would renewables need incentives given that they’re already cheaper? I’d call that a subsidy, wouldn’t you?”

The bristling Ayres then responded: “I’m going to take the approach for these estimates, Senator, where I’ll, you’ll ask the questions which you’re entitled to ask, and I’ll answer them and you won’t interrupt me.”

Rennick says it turns out that the government is actually underwriting renewable energy providers for their losses. “This means everything we’re told about them being cheaper is a lie,” he said in a social media post.

“What’s worse is that the government won’t tell us how much taxpayers are stumping up to fund these companies.”

And thanks to a bunch of corrupt, clueless and compromised Queensland Liberal National Party backroom operatives, the Senator who valiantly and decisively exposed the Labor Party’s renewable energy scam and the destruction of Australia’s economic lifeblood is no longer sitting in the Senate.

Before getting into Parliament Senator Ayres was an organiser for the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (NSW/ACT branch) and assistant secretary for the same AMWU branch from 2004 to 2010. He rose up the ranks to secretary of the branch from 2010 to 2017.

Now as a prominent Labor minister and member of the ALP national executive, Ayres is effectively destroying Australian manufacturing and industry and the small business sector by pushing the virtual destruction of the coal-fired energy supply system that fueled Australia’s spectacular industrial growth for much of the previous century.

At the committee hearing Rennick effectively exposed Ayres and his Labor gang’s treacherous sell out to the Paris Accord’s global “wealth redistribution scheme” (aka transition to net zero carbon) to dismantle the nation’s 24×7 coal-fired energy supply by subsidizing a bunch of opportunist companies to build wind and solar farms with standby batteries.

This so-called renewable, net zero energy system is already in place in South Australia, which provides Australia’s most expensive and unreliable electricity and would simply fail were it not connected to the national grid and coal-fired power stations.

The transition to net zero effectively completes the UN’s long-standing deindustrialisation scheme to shift industry to the so-called third world cheap labor locations. So Ayres is effectively selling out the manufacturing workers he once allegedly represented.

Rennick also exposed the dirty, underhanded dealings of the TGA in regard their pushing of dangerous mRNA vaccines, which is probably the major reason he was dumped for preselection by his cowardly Uniparty colleagues – but that’s another story.