Our definitely-not-up-to-something former PM Tony Abbott has decided to use a trip to Coopers‘ Adelaide brewery today to highlight energy policy – and he done gone fucked it.
How? Well, to talk about the need for reliable, affordable power, the man who loves to be photographed looking at things decided to to take a few happy snaps in high vis at a brewery who have their own $7 million natural gas-fired power plant.
Coopers is an iconic Australian business that needs affordable reliable power. @samduluk pic.twitter.com/rtJsgpbEI7
— Tony Abbott (@HonTonyAbbott) August 2, 2017
The task of policy makers is to ensure that’s delivered. pic.twitter.com/9fHmSOwg8t
— Tony Abbott (@HonTonyAbbott) August 2, 2017
Last year, during the great South Australian blackout, the rest of the state had nothing to do but drink and argue because they had no electricity. Coopers meanwhile don’t need no coal-fired power station, and rolled on through the blackout entirely unscathed. They switched to ‘Island’ mode and kept all the electricity their plant was generating to themselves, their bottled beer whirring down the production line.
On a yearly basis, the brewery actually produce more energy than they consume: apparently the plant exports 18,000MWh into the grid, but only uses 6000MWh.
These mere facts didn’t stop Abbott from sharing an incredibly uncomfortable video to Facebook, of himself, his new m8 SA state gov MP Sam Duluk – because Abbott is only allowed to hang out with other Lib backbenchers now – and Tim and Glenn Cooper of the Coopers beer dynasty sinking a cold one and talking energy policy. It’s gripping stuff.
“It’s wonderful to be here at Coopers Brewery with Sam Duluk, my state colleague. This is an iconic Australian business. It’s a great family business – five generations of Coopers have been here.
“But y’know you can’t run a business, you can’t produce a great product and you can’t employ people without energy, without power. That’s a real problem in our country at the moment. We need affordable, reliable power; that means policy has got to change. Here’s the better policy in this country.“
And the ol’ chums cap it off with maybe the sternest group ‘Cheers‘ ever committed to film. Uhm, guys, you know when you cheers, you’re supposed to clink glasses and make intense eye contact or else be cursed to seven years bad sex?
Today’s toast and tour – while riddled with factual errors: uhm, the Coopers have been brewing for six generations, duh, Tone – is only the latest attempt by Abbott to steer the Libs in a different direction on energy policy.
At the end of June he highlighted three strategies that he thought would put help to decrease power prices: freezing the renewable energy target at 15%, a moratorium on new wind farms, and building a new coal-fired power station.
Those are three things the Libs have not yet said they would do, because, despite what some may think, Tone is not their leader anymore.
