What Thinking Australians Are Thinking..
Our Labor and Greens politicians need a crash course in electricity and its generation. Baseload generation is at constant voltage and frequency; wind and solar generation is not. There must be enough baseload generation to guarantee supply; wind and solar cannot do this.
Jeff Stokes, Largs Bay, SA
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It amuses me to hear the Greens describe coal-fired power as 19th-century and outdated. Don Quixote must be chuckling in his grave.
Andrew Kerr, Fitzroy, Vic
SA sitting on uranium
It’s obvious that South Australia needs a robust power generation and distribution system. Sure, the storm was a problem, but relying on power from wind turbines and Victoria is not a long-term solution.
SA is sitting on the world’s largest uranium deposit which could supply the state with power for 1000 years or more. It also has a billion tonnes of thermal coal. It also sits on significant known, conventional natural gas resources and, most likely, large resources of unconventional gas.
But no, wind farms are the thing, expensive (needing subsidies), intermittent and unreliable, and all of this folly based on a false premise of anthropogenic global warming.
Neil Stuart, Fig Tree Pocket, Qld
The plunge in Coalition support will come as no surprise to anyone except the political pundits and media commentators who have urged Malcolm Turnbull to arrest the slide by championing causes such as global warming, same-sex marriage and by donning his leather jacket for more Q&A appearances (“Country voters turn on Coalition”, 3/10).
Of course, this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Tony Abbott’s ratings sank because he was unable to capture the support of swinging voters — the Howard battlers.
Turnbull’s equally low polling is far more serious for the Liberal Party. He is not turning off swinging voters, he’s turning off core Coalition voters. He does not have his heart in championing Liberal policies, and it shows.
The slide will continue unless the Liberal Party decides to change leader or Turnbull has a road to Damascus conversion. As I see it, only one of these is a viable option. Liberal support bled to minor parties in the Senate at the last election; next time it will be in the House of Representatives as well if Turnbull is still leader.
John McLeod, Sunshine Coast, Qld