On coal sanity side

Townsville TONY Abbott’s speech in London was a seminal event. It finally, if belatedly, drew a line in the sand between energy sanity and insanity and invited politicians, business leaders and indeed voters to join him on the side of sanity.

The side of sanity, it should not need stating, is one of cheap, reliable and plentiful electricity, delivered principally by the only form of generation that meets that criteria, and has been meeting it with increasing efficiency for nearly 100 years: coalfired power.

Former Productivity Commission chief Gary Banks and competition reformer Fred Hilmer stepped at least three- quarters of the way over the line with their courageous call for Australia to reduce its emission reductions commitments under the fake ( my word) Paris Climate Accord.

Commitments, it should be noted, that were “committed” by the former prime minister, the said Tony Abbott; albeit – very hurriedly – actually only formally endorsed by his successor Malcolm Turnbull.

Banks and Hilmer were joined somewhere between a quarter and halfway over the line by Paul O’Malley, the retiring CEO of BlueScope Steel, the once- was steel division of BHP, and seemingly the last redoubt of some energy sanity from that conglomeration.

At least O’Malley called for a 10year journey to the land of energy insanity: that of the fake wind and solar so- called renewable energy ( my term again) and the unnecessary excessive use of expensive gas to make electricity.

Straddling the “Abbott line” with O’Malley, I would also put former Origin CEO and former ( temporary) BHP director Grant King, with his endorsement of the Turnbull Government’s ( unofficial, as yet unannounced, and so vulnerable to the onset of political spinelessness) ditching of a CET ( Clean Energy Target).

King made exactly the same point as Turnbull and his Energy Minister John Frydenberg: if, as the renewables main- chancers have been stridently claiming, that wind and solar are now or about to become cheaper than coal, the CET is entirely and totally superfluous.

All future energy investment will flow seamlessly and overwhelmingly into wind and solar.

Indeed, to borrow the quotester style of President Trump, we’ll have so much cheap wind and solar power coming at us, we’ll get tired of having so much of it and it being so cheap.

Except those claims are just complete and utter rubbish. Wind and solar, properly costed for reliability – and without either direct subsidy or the indirect subsidy of penalising coal – will be cheaper than coal in the same year that the first unicorn takes its place in the Melbourne Cup.

But hey, these renewables fanatics and suckers on the taxpayer and consumer teats should be made to put their money where their mouths and their brainlessness are.

Mentioning Frydenberg, I was impressed to see him announcing his belief in climate change. What next? Will he tell us he believes in the moon? Maybe, that he believes in forests? The potential list is endless.

So that’s those on the sanity side of, or at least straddling, the “Abbott line”. A conga line of business sucksters lined up on the insanity side of the “Abbott line”, including King’s successor at Origin, Frank Calabria, who demanded the Government go back to the CET.

Businesspeople like Calabria keep mindlessly prattling about “certainty”. Never mind about rationality; they just what to know “where to invest”. This sort of “certainty” is the certainty only of the grave.

If the Government said it was going to generate all our future electricity by having people pedal on exercise bicycles and feed that ( pathetic) power into the grid, people like Calabria would say: great, at least we’ve now got certainty, so Origin can start building and installing exercise bikes.

In terms of rationality, there is a very small difference between that suggestion and claims that we could get 50 per cent of our electricity from wind and solar.

This – which no one and certainly not the idiot named Bill, masquerading as the alternative PM, and who in his short life in official politics has taken the word cynicism to new lows – would, apart from anything else, require installation of so- called installed “capacity” equal to at least 200 per cent of total electricity demand.

And still we’d also need massive, really polluting, batteries and other power stations ticking over pointlessly for when the “wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine”.

This is one of the great defining moments in time. You have the choice of joining Abbott on the side of sanity or “outing” yourself as being in favour of energy insanity.

Hunt lashes Sydney axing

AUSSIE UFC heavyweight contender Mark Hunt has confirmed he will launch legal action against the UFC after being dumped from the promotion’s Sydney card.

In an interview with News Corp, Hunt revealed he had employed his legal team to take matters further after the UFC pulled him from the main event bout against Poland’s Marcin Tybura.

“I’d love to say more but I just can’t,” he said.

“I can’t say anything until the lawyers talk to me . . . you know it’s not about me being able to fight or not, it’s about my lawsuit (against the UFC and Brock Lesnar), that’s what it’s about.”

Asked if he planned to sue the UFC over his withdrawal from the November 19 bout, he quipped: “I don’t know whether I’ve got no choice.

“They said I can’t fight . . . I don’t have any idea why they’re doing this . . . actually I do, it’s because of my lawsuit and it’s not fair.

“They never cared about my health and safety before, now all of a sudden they’re worried about my health and safety.

“They let fighters fight that were juicers. How ridiculous is that? I have to wait to see what my lawyer says.”

Hunt was sensationally pulled from the bout due to “medical concerns” stemming from a first-person article with Players Voice in which he was slurring his speech and confessed “forgetting something I did yesterday”.

“My body is f----- but my mind is still here. I’ve still got my senses about me and I know what’s right and wrong, which is the main thing,” he wrote in Players Voice.

“Sometimes I don’t sleep well. You can hear me starting to stutter and slur my words. My memory is not that good any more.

“I’ll forget something I did yesterday but I can remember the s--- I did years and years ago. That’s just the price I’ve paid — the price of being a fighter.

“But I’ve fought a lot of drug cheats and copped a lot of punishment from guys who were cheating and that’s not right.”

The UFC acted swiftly, replacing Hunt with Brazilian superstar Fabricio Werdum, and declared the Sydneybased star must have more tests.

“Following a recent firstperson article published by heavyweight Mark Hunt, the UFC has taken the precautionary steps of removing Hunt from a previously announced bout in Sydney, Australia,” a UFC official told News Corp.

“The health-related statements made by Hunt in the article represent the first time UFC was made aware of these claims.

“Athlete health and safety is of the utmost importance to the organisation and it would never knowingly schedule an athlete complaining of health issues for a fight.

“The organisation will require that Hunt undergo further testing and evaluations prior to competing in any future UFC bout.”

But Hunt was having none of it, taking aim at the UFC and its president Dana White in an expletive-laden tirade on social media.

“I spent hours the other day with the doctor. I was cleared to fight. The interview I did with Players Voice was misquoted. I don’t slur my words. It’s a running joke between my wife and me. My memory isn’t great but who remembers s---,” he said.

“I’m disappointed that I have been withdrawn from the fight, I have passed all medicals two days ago. And spent $100,000 on camp.

“The truth is the legal case I have filed caused me to be withdrawn. The interview has been taken out of context and I want to reassure my fans, I slur my words only when I have a drink. I’m fit and healthy, and would have understood if the UFC requested a medical to ensure my safety, however this is total bulls---. F--- you Dana, you’ve always hated me, you dog.”

The No.5 heavyweight in the world is involved in a legal battle with the UFC and American WWE star Lesnar.

Hunt is demanding compensation after Lesnar failed two drug tests following their encounter at UFC 200.

Rugby in ‘ one plan’ search for lost glory

AUSTRALIAN Super Rugby teams could share live player data mid- season as part of a unified push to return Aussie rugby to the top of the world.

The unprecedented idea was part of a historic summit in Sydney yesterday, where a large group of Australian rugby’s best minds gathered to figure out how to pull together and get back to winning.

The meeting, convened by ARU high performance heads Ben Whitaker and Rod Kafer, saw Michael Cheika and the Wallabies coaching staff in attendance, along with the coaches, football staff and high performance bosses of all four Australian Super Rugby teams.

The men’s and women’s Aussie sevens programs were also in the room. The two- day forum will see work on leadership development through UTS but the key goal of the summit is to nut out the specifics of a new unified approach to Australian rugby that will see all teams collaborating extensively in 2018 and beyond.

After Wallabies and Super Rugby coaches agreed in June to use the same conditioning programs next year, chairman, CEOs and high performance bosses from the ARU and all states met in August.

They agreed to a new “One Plan” model that will see all teams operate under a national high performance system.

“The detail will be thrashed out now in terms of strength and conditioning coaches, analysts, high performances managers,” Whitaker said.

After decades of suspicion and distrust between states, and toward the ARU, the solidarity in the “One Plan” system is unprecedented in Australian rugby.

The collectively dismal Super Rugby season in 2017 no doubt diminished much of the entrenched resistance, but Whitaker said there was a “real consensus” in any case that the best way for Australia to begin to turn the tide against New Zealand was to work together.

Rising costs give steel giant the blues

BLUESCOPE Steel still expects its first-half earnings to be lower than they were in the second half of the past financial year because of rising costs, outgoing head Paul O’Malley says.

Energy prices remain a major issue for the manufacturer, he says, with electricity and gas costs soaring.

Speaking at BlueScope’s annual meeting in Melbourne yesterday, Mr O’Malley said Australia would only be able to remain competitive if it focused on baseload energy as well as “future initiatives”.

BlueScope, Australia’s biggest steelmaking business, in August offered a cloudy outlook as it flagged a hit to earnings in its first half.

The company said underlying earnings – a profit tally that strips out one-off items – in the six months to December would be about 80 per cent of earnings in the second half of the past financial year, covering the six months to June.

At the time, it attributed the deterioration to factors including higher scrap prices in the US, lower steel margins in the domestic market and escalating energy costs.

Mr O’Malley told shareholders yesterday there had been “some movement in the macroeconomic indicators since then”.

But that was not expected “to have a material impact on financial performance in the first half ”, he said.

Mr O’Malley said Bluescope’s electricity costs would 15 13 11 9 7 Oct ’16 have nearly doubled over the two years to June 2018, while gas costs would have increased by a third over the same period to $32 million.

While he applauded the federal government’s intervention in the gas market this year, he called for a 10-year en- Oct ’17 ergy transition policy that addressed concerns over prices and reliability.

“Debating future coal or gas, hydro, nuclear or renewable energy supply, is fine – so long as there is a sensible transition over the next 10 years that secures our everyday life and living,” Mr O’Malley said. The country would be able to retain its economic competitiveness only if it also focused on fundamental baseload energy that powered homes, factories, schools and hospitals, he said.

Mr O’Malley’s comments came as peak lobby group the Business Council of Australia yesterday demanded a permanent seat at the table when alternatives to a clean energy target were considered.

BlueScope shares closed down 0.26 per cent yesterday at $11.49.

Middle-income earners' tax hit to pay for Coalition company cuts

The government’s plan to return the budget to surplus is heavily reliant on personal tax increases across every income bracket but hitting middle-income earners hardest, the Parliamentary Budget Office has revealed.

Middle income earners (with an average taxable income of $46,000) will experience the highest average tax increases of any income quintile, jumping 3.2 percentage points, from 14.9% to 18.2% over the next five years.

The PBO’s paper, released on Wednesday, reveals for the first time how the Turnbull government’s projected budget surplus in 2020-21 is relying on specific increases in average personal income tax rates.

The tax hikes reflect a seismic shift in the taxation burden from businesses to individuals. The personal tax increases are necessary to compensate for the government’s controversial $65.4bn company tax cut.

According to the PBO, the average tax rate on individual Australians is estimated to increase by 2.3 percentage points between 2017-18 and 2021-22.

But there are large differences between income quintiles. Taxpayers in the first income quintile (the lowest 20% of income earners) will see their average tax rate increase by 0.2 percentage points over the next five years.

Taxpayers in the second income quintile will see their average tax rate increase by 2.5 percentage points.

Taxpayers in the fourth quintile will see their average tax rate increase by 2.3 percentage points.

Taxpayers in the fifth quintile (the highest 20% of income earners) will see their average tax rate increase by 1.9 percentage points.

The PBO report shows the Turnbull government is relying heavily on “bracket creep” to bring the budget back to surplus. Bracket creep is the phenomenon whereby taxpayers shift into higher tax brackets when their nominal incomes grow, due to inflation and/or real wages growth.

The PBO says the government’s projected budget surplus is relying heavily on more than 1 million Australians shifting into higher tax brackets over the next five years, where their average tax rates will increase.

Projections show over 900,000 taxpayers will move from a marginal tax rate of 32.5% to 37% between 2017-18 and 2021-22.

Similarly, 700,00 people are projected to move from a marginal tax rate of 19% to 32.5% over the same period.

“In addition to the effect of nominal income growth, average tax rates are projected to increase due to policy changes, most notably the policy decision to increase the Medicare levy from 2019-20,” the PBO report says.

Two weeks ago award-reliant workers in the fast food, hospitality, retail and pharmacy sectors lost millions of dollars in income collectively after their public holiday penalty rates were cut in Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, the ACT and South Australia.

According to the McKell Institute, a Labor-aligned thinktank, those workers may have collectively lost between $4.7m and $9.5m on the grand final weekend, depending on how many were rostered on.

The PBO warned earlier this year that the Turnbull government’s plan to return the budget to surplus on the back of rising personal income tax relied heavily on a sharp acceleration in wages growth over the decade.

It warned the “significant slowdown” in wages growth experienced in the past few years suggested this gamble by the government was subject to “downside risk”.

An expiry date movie

An appealingly appalling teenhorror thriller, Happy Death Day chucks Groundhog Day into a microwave with the first Scream movie, and turns all the controls way up to the max.

Cleverly, the filmmakers know we’re all gonna keep watching to see what happens, even if it is against our better judgment.

Surprisingly, Happy Death Day never quite self-combusts, or even melts down into a glob of gory goo (though it does emit some whiffy fumes at times).

No, this is actually a tight, well-packaged effort: capable of raising tension levels into the dread zone when needs be, and just as capable of cracking a gag or three about how ridiculous the whole exercise is becoming.

Little-known Jessica Rothe stars as Tree, a self-obsessed college student trapped in a terminal time loop, for reasons that will never be sufficiently explained.

Not that it matters one iota. Happy Death Day is not here to re-prove Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. It is here to pick you up and take you on a pulpy, gulpy thrill ride.

A typical day for Tree runs something like this. Each morning at 9am, she wakes up in someone else’s room across campus.

She gets dressed. Does the traditional walk of shame back to her sorority house, where her roommate will remind her that today is her birthday.

Then it’s off to a day of classes, interspersed with a steamy hook-up with a married professor, a fractious meeting with her sorority sisters, and preparations for a party later in the evening.

By midnight, Tree will have died a terrible death at the hands of a masked killer. Then her alarm goes off, and the whole surreal ordeal starts over.

To stop finishing the day on such a bum note, this determined young woman must sift for clues about her assassin’s identity every time she is about to die.

Poor old Tree gets lopped over 20 times during the movie, so the investigation could take a while.

Though this movie is as disposable and dumb as such fare can be, it delivers its unrefined batch of goods in full, thanks to two key factors.

Firstly, the Groundhog Day repetition thing never gets old. Done right, like it is here, it forces the plotting to drop a lot of excess baggage.

Secondly, the casting of Rothe in the lead role of Tree is a masterstroke. For someone whose acting CV is mostly C-list TV, she is a real find. Someone who can repeatedly switch between confident, annoying, amusing and vulnerable — so quickly and so precisely — has real skills.

At its best, Happy Death Day is big, trashy fun, best seen with small expectations. At its worst, it’s just trash ... but it’s still fun!

Gai talks up English to conquer Everest

Gai Waterhouse thinks English will win Saturday’s The Everest and declared barrier 12 “couldn’t be better” for her runner in the $10 million race.

Renowned for being confident, Waterhouse was her usual self yesterday when she told a media pack at her Randwick stables why English was the horse to beat in the inaugural running of The Everest.

“I think she will win and I will tell you why I think she will win,” Waterhouse said.

“She is feisty, she is tough and she has rolled up her sleeves for the day and we’ve got her ready.”

English drew the outside barrier in the 12-horse field on

Gai Waterhouse on English

Tuesday but Waterhouse feels the wide draw is an advantage.

“Barrier 12 couldn’t be better. I’m telling you because she will be out there and she will be able to make her own luck and that’s what you want in these races, because there will be a stack of speed inside her,” she said.

English is rated a $12 chance behind $4.80 favourite Vega Magic but Waterhouse feels she is peaking at the right time.

English scored a slashing second in the Group 2 Premiere Stakes (1200m) a fortnight ago and Waterhouse said she has continued to thrive since.

“She has come right at the right time and she has put on the body weight you want going into a major event,” Waterhouse said.

“You see her skin the way it gleams and the muscle tone on her and she would knock you over.”

Co-trainer Adrian Bott shares the same enthusiasm and feels English is primed to run a big race at Randwick.

“She is exactly where she needs to be and we have been confident in her preparation all the way through and we are really looking forward to Saturday,” Bott said.

The Everest concept has taken Sydney racing by storm to put the Harbour City in the forefront of Australian spring racing.

Melbourne has dominated spring for many years but Everest Day is now on the cusp of overshadowing Caulfield Guineas Day in Melbourne on Saturday.

Waterhouse is a big supporter of the Everest concept and insists it will grow.

“It is quite unbelievable,” she said. “It started in America and (Racing NSW chief ) Peter V’landys grabbed hold of the concept and has made it work.”

“She is feisty, she is tough and she has rolled up her sleeves for the day and we’ve got her ready.”