When the Rudd government greatly expanded the Renewable Energy Target in 2009, turning an innocuous Howard government initiative into the raging, grid-destabilising monster that we know today, there was little opposition.

Eight years down the track, with the problems of loading a lot of wind power on a grid not designed for it and unable to adapt quickly to change painfully apparent, state and federal governments are now labouring hard to make things worse, with a range of weird and wonderful policy announcements.