If you believe the Greens and their ‘yes men’ posse of MSM papers, Australia is banning gas to save the planet.

What’s next, banning gas BBQs? Well, if Australians can’t own a home, can’t go fishing, can’t drive a ute, and can’t ‘throw a shrimp on the barbie’ – our culture is dead. Twenty years. That’s all it took to dismantle the Australian dream.

That said, it’s going to be difficult to pry gas cookers from the restaurant industry, and most people I know would go to war before letting a half-wit bureaucrat touch their oven … but this transition will happen by force, like every other bad decision.

Gas connections are being banned in new builds and a plan is in place to eventually rip out existing gas lines – all so politicians can play ‘hero’ with a headline. Never mind the environmental waste of tossing millions of stoves into landfill where they can rot beside broken solar panels and turbine blades. And these people were worried about plastic straws? Please.

Did anyone bother to ask if their claim about gas is true?

Think about it for more than two seconds and you’ll realise that gas suppliers have no intention of shutting up shop and closing the valves. Australia’s natural gas is going to be sold and used by someone. By banning Australians from accessing their natural resource, it’ll be flogged off to international bidders at a premium, just as our coal is shipped to Beijing where it powers the ‘renewable’ export industry which the Greens worship without a hint of irony.

The war on gas is a heist of this nation’s natural resources. We are being robbed by Net Zero. Swindled by ideologues. Deceived by garden variety charlatans.

Currently, gas producers are balancing local market requirements with export contracts which have expanded since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Gas is in demand and artificial layers of scarcity through – say – Net Zero restrictions, makes it more valuable.

Domestic use has also increased, with Australians circumnavigating crippling ‘renewable’ energy bills by installing gas heaters and cooktops. Gas grants people independence from the increasingly unreliable power grid, something policymakers don’t like. At least those of us using gas can still heat food and make a cup of tea when the lights go out. What happened to ‘security in resource diversity’? Did we chuck that out the window last week? Now it’s ‘all eggs in the renewables basket’ with smiley faces drawn on them for protection. Get used to the vibe.

While the Greens and Labor (and even the Liberals – who’ve never missed an opportunity to hang off the back of a climate bandwagon, dragging themselves through the dirt) harp on about ‘banning gas to save the planet’ – one gas provider proudly states on its website:

‘We all like to do our bit for the planet, so you’ll be happy to know you can reduce your household carbon emissions by switching from appliances running on grid electricity to natural gas.’

It then advertises gas as the ‘perfect partner to solar’ and that by connecting your home to natural gas you can ‘lower your carbon emissions by up to 77 per cent in Victoria compared to electric cooking and hot water appliances’.

So, which is it?

Then there is a spiel about switching to a new technology called renewable gas. If that is on the horizon, why are politicians demanding we rip out gas connections and perfectly good equipment? Shouldn’t there be a debate about waiting for renewable gas to kick in? Or a conversation? Why are ‘green’ politicians advocating such an extraordinary waste of resources, money, and infrastructure? At least the gas supplier offers facts and figures to back up their position.

The ‘health’ argument to ditch gas, which originated in the US, is a piece of nonsense. Gas ‘might’ contribute to a range of conditions, despite this never being the case previously. Its argument piggy-backs off Covid insisting that because lockdowns caused people to spend more time at home, we need to improve the indoor safety by banning gas (and some muttering about the poor being vulnerable). No doubt these same passionate advocates for gas safety have nothing to say about Covid vaccine side effects or the legalisation of dangerous drugs. These arguments of convenience are paper-thin and yet remain unchallenged by the press.

As for the political class, is there a single adult left in Parliament? It sounds petulant to say, but this is a valid question when staring down the reckless abandon of Net Zero.

The ACT, with the highest concentration of public servants humming around the hive of Parliament, passed a law to ban gas in new homes. No, they didn’t ban renewable energy sourced from an abusive communist state whose manufacture commits environmental crimes and exploits vulnerable people. That kind of energy gets the 5-star approval. The claim of ‘environmentally friendly’ is built on the power of declaration, not fact.

The gangrenous Parliament in the ACT championed this Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Natural Gas Transition) Amendment Bill without having to prove the figures behind its claims. Other states, particularly Victoria, are rushing to join them.

What’s the total carbon footprint, life to death, of a solar plant and all of its associated grid restructuring, battery backup, and 20-year replacement cycle over the next hundred years? You don’t know. The ACT Parliament doesn’t know. And the Greens certainly don’t know. It’s a feel-good idea that means nothing, like when you find out that ‘100 per cent real juice’ is the name of a brand, not a description of the contents.

It’s reminiscent of the ACT’s claim that it is a ‘100 per cent renewable energy city’ when four-fifths of its energy, according to the ABC, is taken from the eastern seaboard coal and gas grid. What the ACT actually does is use public money to buy its renewable label while connecting itself to a coal and gas extension cord in the real world. If we were to sever Canberra from fossil fuels, as we should, we’d see their lie emerge as a the dark patch on a NASA image.

With only 5 per cent of its energy generated inside the ACT, it is an energy parasite – virtue signalling with a safety net. Their claim of ‘100 per cent’ matters, because it has been repeated by the ACT Energy Minister to justify the banning of gas.

‘The first step in phasing out gas completely is to prevent the installation of any new gas,’ said Rattenbury, as if that was a comment to be proud of.

Why would Australian households want to make themselves more reliant on a type of energy that has become so expensive they’ve started choosing between heating their homes and buying food?

Australia’s grid is stretched to breaking. The federal government’s push to saturate our roads with electric vehicles within five years will collapse it. Why would any government legislate additional and unnecessary pressure on this system?

The answer is that politicians have no idea what they are doing and are wholly incapable of thinking their way through even the most basic of consequences for their ‘virtuous’ thought bubbles. It’s this kind of incompetence that creates dystopian nightmares overnight, like our neighbour – Sri Lanka – the poster child for the UN’s climate movement. Their children are starving on the street, engaged in child labour after schools shut down in continuous blackouts.

In the West, the war on gas came out of nowhere.

It’s a nonsense. It’s propaganda. It’s a band-aid to cover embarrassing political failures.

Flat White is written and edited by Alexandra Marshall