Karl Marx’s ‘Labor Theory of Value’ was always ludicrously wrong, but he did dimly grasp one thing: input costs are real. The cost of raw materials and labor do not determine the value that a consumer places on an item, but it does set a floor, below which a producer makes a loss.
When input costs rise sharply, a seller has two options: raise prices in order to keep up or run at a loss and eventually go out of business.
One of the biggest input costs for just about any business, but especially the food business, is energy. Growing food, transporting it, storing it, refrigerating it and cooking it: that all takes energy. Lots of it. So, when energy costs rise, so does the price of food.
This is the big delusion – or outright lie – of the Climate Cult: that energy prices can be driven sky-high, with no effect on the rest of the economy. Just like the Covidian lie that entire economies could be ‘paused’, without causing massive and expensive disruption.
The brutal lesson to the contrary was driven home during the brief, unlamented Julia Gillard carbon tax. The one she promised, unequivocally, the day before the election, not to introduce. Within months, restaurants and cafes were being driven to the wall.
Labor having learned nothing: it’s happening again.
Employers supplying food to major supermarkets and thousands of cafes, restaurants and pubs have launched a revolt against Anthony Albanese’s energy policies, urging Labor to dump its 82 per cent renewables target and focus on ramping up more gas and coal production to bring electricity prices down in the short term.
The Independent Food Distributors Australia – whose members use large chillers and freezers to store and supply food for 60,000 retailers – has broken with other peak industry bodies and is calling on the Albanese government to recalibrate its climate change agenda, with business owners reporting energy price increases of more than 50 per cent since Labor gained power.
Big business has spent far too long parroting the right-on palaver of the Climate Cult. Eventually, virtue-signalling is going to get steamrolled by the harsh reality of business. The food industry is just the first to buckle and speak out.
Business owners in the sector have told The Australian they want the government to drop its “ideological” approach to energy and instead support upgrades of existing coal-fired power stations while bringing on new gas peaking plants.
Employers also want the government to fast track the approvals of new coal mines and gas fields to lower the price of baseload power, disagreeing with Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s claim that new renewables projects are the answer to lower prices.
In fact, the lived reality is that, everywhere it’s been tried, higher penetration of ‘renewables’ has led directly to higher energy prices. But facts are kryptonite to an ideological buffoon like Boofhead Bowen.
People whose income isn’t guaranteed by the taxpayer, though, can’t afford the luxury of ideology.
IFDA chief executive Richard Forbes said there was a “national energy emergency”, arguing the government’s policies were driving up the price of food for consumers. “Based on the impact of the level of increase in energy pricing for food businesses, and the downstream impact for consumers … there should be a very serious look at the approach towards net-zero at present because of the damage that is being done,” Mr Forbes said […]
Mr Forbes said the “clear message” from IFDA’s 200 members, which employ 8500 people, was that coal-fired power generation was being phased out too quickly and the renewables target of 82 per cent by 2030 was problematic.
Under Labor’s plan, 90 per cent of coal-fired power stations will be retired within the next decade and there will be no coal generation by 2038.
And we’ll all be stuffed. And either broke or starving.
“As far as I am concerned, the government’s energy policy has and continues to increase the price of food,” Mr Forbes said.
“Food businesses are sick and tired of hearing the government saying they are doing something about the cost of living, when their costs, particularly energy costs, are soaring.”
Try telling that to Boofhead, though.
Rejecting the push from food distributors, a spokesman for Mr Bowen said experts had found that “unreliable coal generators are driving price spikes”.
‘Experts’ paid to tell this absolute clown only what he wants to hear. He really is that stupid that he actually believes it. In any case, if coal generators are unreliable, now, it’s only because of his own policies that have prevented maintenance, let alone building new stations.
Godden Food Group employs 130 people in NSW and Queensland, distributing food to Woolworths and Coles, as well as cafes, restaurants, pubs and clubs.
[Managing director Jeff Godden…] said it was a “disgrace” that Mr Albanese, Mr Bowen and Jim Chalmers would not admit the government had failed to deliver on its pre-election commitment to lower electricity prices by $275 on 2022 levels by this year.
“Answer the question,” Mr Godden said. “I think they’re treating the Australian people like idiots, like fools.”
Well, idiots and fools will treat everyone else by their own low standards. Maybe when the Climate Cultists are eating their $50 smashed avo in the dark, maybe then they’ll finally get it.
Don’t hold your breath, though.
