Duchess of Exeter 🌏

Not quite the win we’d hoped for ….. The government will instead transfer the 176-year-old barracks to the Department of Finance to allow it to be leased for events, rather than sold off to a private buyer.

Insurance premiums have surged forty-six percent in under five years. This isn't global inflation doing its thing — this is a deliberate policy choice to retire reliable coal generation and replace it with intermittent wind and solar, then build tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines to carry power from where the wind blows to where people actually live. And who pays for all of it? You do. Every household. Every business. Every manufacturer trying to keep the lights on and the doors open. Look at the numbers state by state. In South Australia, the median rate is nearly forty-two cents per kilowatt-hour — the highest in the nation. In New South Wales, it's around thirty-two cents. In regional NSW on the Essential Energy network, the regulated reference price is two thousand six hundred and four dollars a year. In South Australia, two thousand three hundred and thirty-four. And on top of the usage rate, every household pays a daily supply charge — anywhere from about four hundred and thirty to six hundred and sixty dollars a year just for the privilege of being connected. That's before you've switched on a single light. And here's the part they don't put in the press releases. The wholesale spot price might have dipped lately — sixty-three dollars per megawatt-hour in the September quarter, down twenty-seven percent on a year ago. Great. But that number is a mirage for what you actually pay. Network charges make up thirty-nine to fifty-four percent of your bill, and they don't fall when wholesale prices do. Environmental schemes add another two to three percent directly. And the futures market — what retailers actually lock in when they set your contract — is climbing hard. New South Wales twenty twenty-seven contracts are up thirteen percent this quarter. Queensland up nearly thirteen. Victoria up nine and a half. The October heatwave sent the NSW spot price to over twenty-three thousand dollars per megawatt-hour for a single half-hour. That's not a glitch. That's what happens when you've dismantled baseload and you're praying the wind picks up. A leaked Victorian government briefing warned household bills there will soar by up to twenty-seven percent over the next decade as coal plants close, with large businesses facing increases of up to sixty percent. Western Australia's own modelling showed industrial electricity costs could rise eighty-nine percent by twenty thirty-two without intervention. Nexa Advisory found that just delaying transmission projects could add thirty-seven percent to wholesale prices between twenty twenty-seven and twenty thirty-one — up to four hundred and seventy-two dollars on the average household bill. And a leaked gas infrastructure document admitted Victorian policies alone could add a hundred dollars a year per household as the gas network shrinks and remaining customers get slugged to cover the costs. Then there's the data centre bomb. The Smart Energy Council estimates that if five gigawatts of new data centre demand connects to the existing grid without bringing its own power, it will add forty billion dollars to wholesale electricity costs across the eastern states between twenty twenty-nine and twenty thirty-five. Households carry nine point two billion of that. A Queensland household would pay an extra three hundred and seventy dollars a year from twenty twenty-nine — nearly twenty percent on top of an already brutal bill. Victoria, another seven hundred and thirty-nine. South Australia, six hundred and sixty-one. New South Wales, five hundred and forty-three. And Queensland's Crisafulli government is talking about building new taxpayer-funded coal plants to power these data centres — fifteen to twenty billion dollars for a single facility — which means the public pays twice: once for the renewables transition and again for the backup when it fails.