June 2023 – The Saltbush Club

Save the Children

By Graham Pinn

Something is going seriously wrong with our children; standards are declining in education, manners and respect are forgotten, ignorance, expectation and entitlement abound. Where have we gone wrong? The US Surgeon-General has announced that social media are harming children’s development, the recent “copycat” gun assault at a Perth school is a reality-check for the future.

Even at an early age, the concept of play has now been taken over by activism, requiring it gender neutral; boys playing with tanks and girls with dolls encouraged stereotypes and has become unacceptable to academia. Some bizarre parents are even choosing to cross-dress their children, from an early age, to encourage diversity – surely child abuse? In any case, playtime has become device time, with little opportunity for imagination, or development of manual or creative skills. Continue reading “Save the Children”

Green Australia: where Industry is on Edge, the grid “precarious” and electricity prices up 25%

By Jo Nova

The land that is the Renewable Crash Test Dummy is holding its breath.

This time last year, the Australian energy market turned into a kind of Hunger Games spectacle with daily feeding-fest at dinner time where prices were so burning hot that unhedged smaller retailers begged their own customers to leave them and then the whole market was suspended. The bonfire was so big we’re still paying for it, and retail electricity prices are set to rise another 25% in a few weeks.

So it’s no surprise that as the cold weather arrives downunder, everyone involved in energy is “on edge”. Suddenly Australian corporate leaders are telling it like it is — the Alinta Gas chief says there is just no way we can build enough renewables in time — he can’t even “see a way” of building enough renewables to compensate for the coal units that are being closed.

The man who used to run the Snowy Hydro Scheme agrees (and then some) — saying we need to build a “Snowy” every year, and we are being lied to (his words) and it will take not 8 years, but 80 years to get there. The head of EnergyAustralia says shutting down the Liddell coal plant means the system is “exposed”. These are people at the top (or formerly) of our biggest energy companies.

The Past and Future for Coal Ports in Queensland

By John McRobert BE (Civ)

In looking to the future, we must first understand the past.

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) was well named. Queensland’s coastline is over 5,000 km long, further than the distance from London to Newfoundland. For approximately half of the Queensland coastline, the GBR provides a barrier not only to the dreaded tsunamis, but to invasion – one of the decisive events of WW II was fought and won outside the GBR in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

But the GBR doesn’t provide total protection from huge ocean waves – these can be generated inside the reef by severe tropical cyclones – and the current selection of offshore ports is not only ill-prepared for future storms, but totally inadequate for future shipping demands. As for defence, while we spend billions on submarines in Adelaide to defend the country from iceberg attack, there is no naval base on the north-east coast of the continent to service and maintain a naval fleet where it could be best deployed.

Read the full document: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/pilotage-conference.pdf [PDF, 4.5 MB]