> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A Trillion-Dollar Hole in the Ground - URL: https://goodoil.news/a-trillion-dollar-hole-in-the-ground/ - Published: 2026-08-25T23:30:53.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-25T23:30:52.000Z - Description: The Sun King’s legacy is all-too appropriate – if only we weren’t paying for it. - Author: Lushington Brady - Tags: AUS Politics, Climate Change God save us from left-wing politicians determined to leave a ‘legacy’. **Kevin Rudd**’s NBN. **Julia Gillard**’s NDIS. **Dan Andrews** and **Jacinta Allan**’s Big Build. Invariably, their only real legacy is a mountain of debt and a second-rate behemoth. **Malcolm Turnbull** may have been a coalition PM, but he was very much of the left-wing. The quintessential ‘moderate’ blue-green. His legacy is Snowy 2.0\. And what a legacy it will be: already one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in Australian history and it’s doubtful if it will ever be anything more than a costly hole in the ground. It’s such a colossal disaster that it gets its own feature in the ‘megastructures’ YouTube series (where, hilariously, they attributed it to ‘Michael Turnbull’). And it’s just getting worse and worse. > [It is possible](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/fate-of-12bn-snowy-20-hangs-in-balance-as-new-drill-tackles-impassable-rock/news-story/d1505abf5a8d3fb1a113c535?ref=goodoil.news) that the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro battery designed to provide reliability to our proposed renewables network – which includes a vast array of transmission towers and solar and wind generators – cannot be constructed in the way that has been planned. If at all. It’s increasingly likely, if not bleeding obvious, that money already poured in, plus every transmission tower and generator already built around it, will be worth little more than a scrap-metal claim. The feasibility study warned about the rock. The desperate need to hit artificial climate targets meant those warnings were treated as optional reading. It’s the geology, stupids. The heart of the scheme is a 17 km tunnel linking the upper and lower dams so water can be pumped uphill and then generate power on the way down. Smack in the middle sits roughly 800 metres of some of the nastiest ground on the planet: the Long Plain Fault Zone. Florence, the first tunnel-boring machine, started from the top and promptly got bogged in material that was always going to stop her short of the fault. So Monica, a purpose-built beast, was ordered to attack the same stretch from the bottom. She is better equipped, but there is still no guarantee she will punch through and meet Florence. Right now the question of whether Monica can finish the job has overtaken any polite discussion of cost overruns. If she cannot, the entire project becomes an expensive museum exhibit of green hubris. People on site are already talking about what Australia does next without Snowy 2.0\. The answers are unfashionable: coal stations will have to keep running for another decade or two; at least four more gas-fired stations the size of Newport will be required just to keep the lights on. Or, in the one sensible option that, predictably, the government refuses to consider, nuclear: especially the compact Australian technology that was allowed to migrate to the United States. Even if Monica succeeds, Snowy 2.0 is still too small to deliver the reliability the renewables network demands. More gas is needed either way. Queensland, characteristically, seems to be the only state that has bothered to do its homework and is keeping clear of Canberra’s chaos. > Meanwhile, environmentalists fear that predatory fish in the lower levels are likely to be pumped up to the high country and over time destroy many unique native species that have been protected by their isolation. This was the main reason the nascent Green movement tried to stop the Lake Pedder dam in the ’70s. As it happens, the fish in question, the Lake Pedder galaxias, is doing fine thanks to being transplanted to other lakes. Then there’s the ‘Bruvva Premium’. > Finally, with the CFMEU playing the key role in running the project, the normal 30 per cent rise in costs that comes when the union is involved is happening. It looks like a 25 per cent pay rise has been agreed to with further cost rises to come. And the CFMEU will control the building of the thousands of transmission towers that will be required if Monica gets through. Again, add 30 per cent to all costs. Snowy Hydro’s own CEO has effectively confirmed what independent analysts calculated years ago: the high-country works alone are heading toward $20 billion, with essential transmission and generation facilities adding another $20 billion. Add the union premium and the total sails comfortably past $40 billion. Turnbull’s original $2 billion fairy-tale now looks like a child’s drawing on the fridge. Zoom out further and the entire renewables experiment, complete with developer guarantees and the usual rorts, sits somewhere between $900 billion and a trillion dollars. And we’ll still need coal for years and we will still need gas even after that. The result is one of the most expensive power systems on earth. Nuclear, by comparison, is a bargain. Turnbull wanted a legacy. He got a hole in the ground, a mountain of debt, and a textbook case of what happens when political vanity collides with geology. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.**