Gary Banks and Fred Hilmer: praying blackouts restore energy sanity.

If Australia’s energy policy debate was a theatre production, it would be labelled ‘high farce’.

Throwing $60 billion to the sun and the wind, destroying a grid which was renowned for not only its expanse, but its reliability and sending power prices from the very bottom of the league table, all the way to the very top, might sound like the work of deranged or scurrilous thespians. Except, this is the considered and deliberate work of successive Liberal/National and Labor/Green Federal governments.

The seriousness of what is, otherwise, a tragic comedy hasn’t been lost on Gary Banks and Fred Hilmer. Banks and Hilmer are elder statesmen of economic policy, and responsible for some of Australia’s most important and lasting economic reforms.

They are aghast at what has happened to energy policy in Australia and are astonished that Australia is the…