Gottleibsen: Australian Energy Crisis “criminal” with 75% chance of blackout

Last days before Hazelwood shuts down.

Robert Gottleibsen in The Australian a couple of days ago has investigated our energy crisis, and discovered our old centralized grid design is quite likely to fall over next summer in an incredibly expensive way. It’s nice that he did some research and even talked to engineers:

The looming crisis is much worse than I expected. Three state governments, Victoria NSW and South Australia, have vandalised our total energy system. The Premiers of each state clearly had no idea what they were doing and did not sit down with top engineers outside the government advisers to work out the best way to achieve their objectives — whether that be an increase in renewables or gas restrictions.

He warns that it is potentially criminal:

I have been alerted that in the 1995 Federal Criminal Code under Section 137.1 in Chapter 7 there is a section entitled ‘Good administration of government’.

Me? I remain a cynic (not that I’m a lawyer). The legislation has been there since 1995, threatens 12 months in prison for “misleading information”. It can’t be this simple.

Still it would be good if politicians were scared into doing […]