Gerard Holland, CEO of the Page Research Centre, wrote an opinion article in the Australian Financial Review.
Every major smelter or refinery in the country is now either subsidised, curtailed, or under review, putting over 73,000 jobs at risk.
“If the energy transition is an open-heart surgery, as is sometimes said, then this operation has been a complete failure so far. We have to conclude: The patient is in danger of dying on the operating table.”
This was the frank assessment sent to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in July of this year in an open letter from Germany’s leading industrial giants and manufacturing unions.
Across the world and at home, experience is converging on the same conclusion: the transition is proving far harder and more expensive than first promised.
In Australia, advocates for the current net zero pathway often speak as though the costs are settled and objections are merely political.
No one can deny that power bills have soared in recent years. But what remains hotly contested is whether the transition to net zero is the medicine that will cure this pain, or as the Germans put it, the intervention that is at risk of killing the patient.
