Random Note — Privatisation of an essential service

Although Mike Cannon-Brookes pitch for AGL has been rejected by the board, for a second time, such a corporate play should serve as a warning because his entry into the energy ownership mix highlights the predictable and eventual folly of losing control to corporate rather than community interests with the selling off of an essential service.

That is, you never know who is going to buy and what ideological baggage they bring to the table.

If this sale or similar (think, the ABC) were to proceed, Cannon-Brookes has indicated his ideological determination to turbocharge and telescope the transformation of the AGL energy grid to unreliable and unaffordable renewables into an even tighter timeframe than was already proposed.

All of this is the end result of an equal determination of privatisation by a combination of a big end of town, lobbyist and banker class and a shortsighted and ideological political class.

For the last 10 or 15 years, while coal has been getting its hands dirty doing the heavy lifting, renewables, with taxpayer subsidies have had a free ride and able to hide in the shadows as a romantic, niche and boutique idea that has never been put to the test as a stand alone concept, able to produce 24/7energy.

Subject to and reliant upon the vagaries of the weather, it stands to reason that renewables can only ever be as predictable as the weather and as such, very much a hit and miss proposition.