“Dumb and desperate:” Coalition panned after vowing to scrap renewable, EV and climate policies - Renew Economy

The Coalition has announced it will repeal renewable energy targets, EV charging infrastructure subsidies, and climate-related policies if elected, describing the current approach as economically damaging. The party characterised the existing framework as costly and impractical, though the article does not detail which specific policies would be repealed or what alternative energy strategy would replace them.

Where this fits

This move reflects frustration with the cost and reliability trade-offs of a renewables-only transition, though it does not propose a coherent alternative. The Coalition's critique implicitly acknowledges that Australia's current path, wind and solar plus gas firming plus transmission overbuild, carries real economic weight. Yet scrapping policies without naming what replaces them leaves the grid's structural problem unsolved: weather-dependent generation still needs firm backup, and Australia still cannot access the one firm, low-emission source that outcompetes both coal and gas on lifecycle carbon. Repealing subsidies does not change the underlying physics of dispatchability.

What it means

Gridlock on energy policy deepens while the world moves faster. A Coalition government that kills renewables targets without legalising nuclear leaves Australia slower to decarbonise than either a renewables-heavy grid or a nuclear grid would allow. Australia remains locked out of the firm, domestically-controlled, low-material, long-lived alternative that could power electrification without the gas bridge, China supply-chain dependence, or the land and material footprint renewables require. The political debate is now between "all renewables" and "fewer renewables," not between "renewables-plus-gas" and "nuclear." Energy security suffers either way.