To understand the Kurri gas plant, we need to go back to when Morrison set up the COVID Commission, tasked with the responsibility to plan our post-COVID recovery.
The commission, which contained no health professionals, was instead stacked with gas industry figures and headed up by Neville Power who was the deputy chair of WA gas company, Strike Energy.
Unsurprisingly, the key advice from the COVID Commission was to spend public money on developing gas infrastructure.
The Coalition government then fast-tracked the development of the Narribri gas field, which received more opposing community submissions than any other project in the history of NSW.
Developing a gas field in the Northern Territory's Bettaloo Basin also became a Coalition priority and was subsequently supported by the Labor Party.
Along with their national gas obsession, the government's been hysterical about the closure of AGL's Liddell coal fired power station in the Hunter.
After suggesting buying the country's oldest coal fired power station with public money, the Coalition made a curious threat to the private energy market, vowing they would build a new gas fired power station if no company came forward with a commitment to deliver 1000 MW of dispatchable energy by the end of April 2021.
The justification for this was that the Liddell Taskforce had identified that the costs of energy were set to rise up to $105 MWH by 2030.
The Liddell Taskforce was set up by the Morrison government to investigate the impacts of Liddell's closure.
The energy price rise that Energy Minister Angus Taylor repeatedly refers to was predicted in the report only if there was no replacement energy infrastructure built.
The report goes on to point out, however, that there were "more than sufficient" energy projects in the pipeline to "maintain a high level of reliability as Liddell exits."
The report lists gas peaking plants as one of several options available to maintain energy price.
Requesting existing power stations to increase their output is also suggested, as modelling expects coal plants to be operating at 60 per cent.
Building new renewables and storage, managing demand response and transmission infrastructure are other taskforce recommendations that Taylor appears to be ignoring.
The minister claimed in a Newcastle Herald opinion piece this week that the Kurri Kurri gas plant was "a responsible investment" with a "robust business case". The business case that was eventually made public by Snowy Hydro contained almost no financial information and a failure to recognise volatile gas prices. The public should not have to take Taylor on his word alone, especially during an election campaign.
The Labor Party have shuffled behind the Coalition in support of the project, with the bizarre and far-fetched claim they will switch the plant to 100 per cent green hydrogen by 2030.
Green hydrogen is certainly something governments should be investing in, but in this case the commitment is pure greenwash.
Snowy Hydro has already ordered turbines for the gas plant that can only handle 15 per cent hydrogen, with a maximum potential of 30 per cent.
To increase this further would require a complete rebuild of the plant's turbines, pipeline and storage systems.
Even then, rebuilding this new gas plant from scratch to become a green hydrogen one is likely to be infeasible.
According to the Victorian Energy Policy Centre, burning green hydrogen in a combustion turbine is so inefficient that it will probably never be used as a way of generating electricity.
Rebuilding this new gas plant from scratch to become a green hydrogen one is likely to be infeasible.
Both of the major parties are pushing hard on the line that this gas plant will create jobs but the 10 permanent jobs it's predicted to create are a drop in the ocean compared with the 14,000 people working in the sunset coal industry in the Hunter Valley.
To claim this as a "jobs win" is an insult to the Hunter region, which desperately needs major investment in new and existing long term, sustainable industries.
The Greens have made a clear commitment not to invest in new coal and gas.
We want to support the clean and green industries of the future, to transition to 100 per cent renewables and rebuild manufacturing in Australia with competitive, green technology.
That's what's really at stake here.
I hope that voters will see the big picture and not just the spin when they fill in their ballots later this year.
