The economic destruction wreaked by Australia’s obsession with intermittent wind and solar was perfectly predictable and perfectly avoidable.

Power prices have rocketed out-of-control, energy hungry industries are chopped from the grid whenever sunset and/or calm weather coincides with heavy demand during very hot or very cold weather. The boffins in charge of this calamity cynically call that Soviet-era rationing ‘demand management’.

Having power as and when businesses need it is one thing, being able to afford it and make a profit, is quite another.

The situation is desperate.

Not least because Liberal PM, Scott Morrison has made no serious effort to restore sanity to the market place, and no sensible effort to build the baseload generation capacity this country sorely needs. Instead, he’s recently announced a plan to build a few small-scale pumped hydro plants and a few highly inefficient gas-fuelled, fast-start peaking power plants (Open Cycle Gas Turbines –…