The brewing discontent between the Palaszczuk government and the Albanese government over coal price caps and the fractitous, slap happy nature to date of any national cabinet consensus to deal with the energy crisis in general is indicative that neither government has its finger on the pulse of what needs to be done to deal with it properly.
No, the war in Ukraine had very little, and still does have very little to do with the energy crisis that Queensland and the whole of Australia is faced with.
The previous Morrison government's failure to invest in renewable energy, while certainly not helping the situation now, is not the primary catalyst for the energy crisis.
Renewable energy is never going to come anywhere close to filling in the blanks in Queensland's or any state's power grid. It wasn't ever meant to, not taking away its legitimacy as a "back up form of power".
The fact is, the energy crisis has got absolutely nothing to do with supply of coal to generate power. There could be three wars happening overseas right now and it would still have nothing to do with it.
The energy crisis has eventuated because the Palaszczuk government, just like previous governments in Queensland, have failed to intervene to regulate what electricity retailers can charge.
Instead of attempting to cap the price of coal as is being widely propositioned, the price of power itself at the retail end is what should be capped.
This is an "energy price crisis", this is not a crisis being brought on by the lack of coal. Queensland has got mountains of it.
Just because "international events" have resulted in a big increase in the price of coal, what is stopping the Palaszczuk government from having some mined under a government contract specifically to be used to generate electricity in Queensland's power stations?
Premier Palaszczuk should take that idea to national cabinet. P.S - but as it turned out - she didn't.
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