BY recalling the state and federal parliaments to sit in the days before Christmas, the Albanese and Perrottet governments were able to pass matching legislation enabling them to end the year saying they were doing something about soaring energy costs.
The NSW law gives the premier the right to "declare a coal market price emergency" - or to announce a return to normal - without a need to "consult anyone".
As the Newcastle Herald reports today, the coal industry has gone public with a number of concerns about the coal-cap policy, which was widened last week to take in all NSW mines, and not just those already supplying domestically.
Both Canberra and Macquarie Street continue to blame the global spike in coal and gas prices on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but as the Herald has argued previously, prices were on the rise well before the war.
At least some of the shortfall must be attributed to another war - the war on coal.
The industry is being battered on all sides by critics, while still supplying the bulk of Australia's electricity - something it is destined to do for years, perhaps decades to come.
If there is a "market failure" here, imposing arbitrary price caps will not solve it.
At best, the coal cap will reduce operating costs for the coal-fired power stations, but this could have been done by addressing the rules of the National Electricity Market, which have allowed solar generators to outbid coal during the day, while making no contribution to the grid during the night.
Instead, we now have state and federal bureaucrats scrambling to find a way to make what the NSW Minerals Council calls "a clumsy, politically motivated market intervention designed in haste" work in the real world.
Serious questions remain as to how this coal will get from the various far-flung coalmines to the state's remaining five coal-fired stations; Eraring, Vales Point, Bayswater, Liddell and Mount Piper.
The state government has acknowledged the industry's concerns about transport, and says contractual "swaps" of coal, rather than outright deliveries, could be involved.
This sounds like export companies subsidising their domestic counterparts.
The consultation now under way should have taken place before the legislation was passed. Instead, it looks like a political cart has been put in front of the real-world horse.
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