2GB’s Alan Jones and Liberal MP Craig Kelly yesterday (4 Feb) discussed the implications of Victoria’s power blackout last week. It was an informative discussion with detail that should be noted by anyone interested in the coming federal election. There’s a lot at stake. The ramifications of where the vote falls will be felt for years.

Without warning, 200,000 homes lost their power. My home was one of those. Seeing one’s computer suddenly black out and all appliances in the house die, provokes a strange unreal feeling. Victoria’s minister for energy Lily D’Ambrosio reportedly blamed the blackout on coal-fired power stations. That seems a strange claim when the Labor government in Victoria closed Hazelwood, the State’s coal-fired power station.

The cause of the sudden blackout, said Kelly, had nothing to do with coal-fired power stations. The problem was a drop in the wind. Given Daniel Andrew’s Labor government has forced Victorians to rely on wind and solar power for their energy, a drop in the wind always presented a risk theoretically. And so, what a primary school child could have deduced from the arrangements happened. The wind dropped on a very hot day and the system collapsed. What had happened in South Australia after the Labor Government’s destruction of their Whyalla coal-fired power station and their reliance on renewables happened in Victoria.