Australian Government pulls the plug on household solar investments

While I agree with your assessment of the LNP, I think the ALP currently lead in the two party preferred. There is some rather nasty economic data coming our way over the next 12 months and I can't see the LNP building support on the back of this.

I'm actually not surprised. I've always had the impression that Australia is rather conservative and backward looking. Not that their treatment of refugees, or, on the other hand, the pathetic incident like the recent one with Johnny Depp, are the norme these days, but the fact that australia is becoming the favorite destination for right wing Americans disappointed with recent gay marriage ruling,that speaks volumes.

Subsidising the research of solar panels sounds like it might be a good idea, but subsidising the installation of solar panels... I don't see the use in that. Could you explain why you think subsidising the installation of solar panels is a good thing?

> filled with progressive, intelligent people.

How did that government get elected then?

I don't find this kind of comment very helpful. You can't be slightly more charitable to the positions of a government a majority of your fellow citizens voted for? You don't have to agree with them, but you can attempt to understand why they might hold those views without needing to be racist or stupid.

I'm not keen on many of the positions of President Obama, Harry Reid or Rand Paul, but I wouldn't describe them as "mouth breathers" on HN.

Only if you also calculate and charge a price on carbon emissions, and the current Australian government stopped that scheme last year.

A market operates in the context of some rules / regulation. If the rules of the market don't penalise you from doing things that have negative side-effects for everyone, such as polluting the atmosphere, then you can still make a lot of money by doing stupid things, to the point that more expensive less-stupid things cannot compete.

> A comprehensive history of great business fortunes would show a disconcertingly large number that were made [where...] the enterpriser devised a silent way to commonize costs while continuing to privatize the profits. -- Garrett Hardin

Yes.

It's a pretty sad situation here in Australia.

The government is completely backwards but brilliant at demonising and wedging the main opposition party on a range of issues: national security, energy policy, human rights, immigration, law (ably assisted by the dominant Murdoch papers). So what is happening is the opposition party is capitulating on pretty much everything hoping that they will survive until the next election (which polls indicate they will win).

Australian's hey. I'm one, and Australian politics reminds me of all those things P.J. O'Rourke wrote.

"In the 2,500-year history of democracy since ancient Athens, a few politicians have arisen who more or less could be trusted with great powers, up to a point, briefly, in times of dire crisis, sort of."

Another of my favourites: " Individual politicians can’t save us either. Democracy means electing people. Politicians are the people who get elected. I’ve spent some time with politicians. I like politicians. I’m friends with politicians from both sides of the aisle. Politicians are fine until they stick their noses into things they don’t understand, such as most things. Then politicians turn into rachet-jawed purveyors of monkey doodle and baked wind. They are piddlers upon merit, beggars at the doors of accomplishment, thieves of livelihood, envy-coddling tax lice applauding themselves for giving away other people’s money. They are lapdogs of demagoguery returning to the vomit of collectivism. They are pig herders tending that sow who eats her young, the welfare state. They are muck-dwelling bottom feeders growing fat on the worries and disappointments of the electorate. They are the ditch carp in the great river of democracy. And that’s what one of their friends says."

"The American political system is like a gigantic Mexican Christmas fiesta. Each political party is a huge piñata - a papier-mâché donkey, for example. The donkey is filled with full employment, low interest rates, affordable housing, comprehensive medical benefits, a balanced budget and other goodies. The American voter is blindfolded and given a stick. The voter then swings the stick wildly in every direction, trying to hit a political candidate on the head and knock some send into the silly bastard."

I think Australia has managed to get by as well as it has in spite of it's more recent politicians not because of them, along with some favourable economic circumstances, which the current set of silly bastards appears to be doing their utmost undo. I'm not so concerned though because not only are politicians generally incompetent they're also mostly impotent and economics tends to exhibit some cyclical behaviour regardless of what this weeks politicians are up to.

"Looks like the current Australian and Canadian governments (Harper) want to fall into the extraction-economy trap and giving incentive to clever people to move elsewhere."

People will move away from Australia because there they would have to pay for their solar systems out of their own pockets?

Actually Saudi Arabia is planning to install huge amount of solar. Mainly because they want to sell more of the black stuff abroad rather than use it internally.

The "extraction-economy trap" comment reminded me of Jared Diamond's book Collapse. It has a chapter titled "Mining Australia", which starts like this:

> Mining in the literal sense -- i.e. the mining of coal, iron, and so on -- is a key to Australia's economy today, providing the largest share of its export earnings. In a metaphorical sense, however, mining is also key to Australia's environmental history and to its current predicament. That's because the essence of mining is to exploit resources that do not renew with time, and hence to deplete those resources. Since gold in the ground doesn't breed more gold and one thus has no need to take account of gold renewal rates, miners extract gold from a gold lode as rapidly as is economically feasible, until the lode is exhausted. Mining minerals may thus be contrasted with exploiting renewable resources -- such as forests, fish, and topsoil -- that do regenerate themselves by biological reproduction or by soil formation. Renewable resources can be exploited indefinitely, provided that one removes them at a rate less than the rate at which they regenerate. If however one exploits forests, fish, or topsoil at rates exceeding their renewal rates, they too will eventually be depleted to extinction, like the gold in a gold mine.

> Australia has been and still is "mining" its renewable resources as if they were mined minerals. That is, they are being overexploited at rates faster than their renewal rates, with the result that they are declining. At present rates, Australia's forests and fisheries will disappear long before its coal and iron reserves, which is ironic in view of the fact that the former are renewable but the latter aren't.

> While many other countries today besides Australia are mining their environments, Australia is an especially suitable choice for this final case study of past and present societies, for several reasons. It is a First World country, unlike Rwanda, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and China, but like the countries in which most of the likely readers of this book live. Among First World countries, its population and economy are much smaller and less complex than those of the U.S., Europe, or Japan, so that the Australian situation is more easily grasped.

(i've typed this out manually from my copy of the book, any stupid typos are my fault, etc)

thank you for making me aware that http://cleantechnica.com/ exists.

Well, coal is still subsidized, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

How is decentralised energy production stupid ? The combination of solar panels with excess power being routed to battery storage or electric car seems like a perfectly legitimate option for consumers.

And Australia will never really be able to contribute a huge amount to the fusion power effort. We lack the funds and sheer combined brainpower of the EU or US. But lots of small scale innovation e.g. Wifi has always been something we've excelled at.

decentralised energy sources seem like a great idea, if you want civilisation to be more robust against disasters, which we're already seeing more and more of and will continue to do so as we warm the planet.

decentralised decarbonised energy sources seems superficially like win-win: as we wreck the planet, they're more robust, and it also slows the rate we're wrecking the planet.

i agree it would probably be helpful to spend a lot more money on research.

it would also be a good idea to spend less money and effort on useless consumer junk, and have a good hard think about the long-term implications of the philosophy of economic growth as the solution to all problems.

It's not about subsidies, it's about investments.