Energy prices: the new fault line in politics

Energy has emerged as the clear new faultline in Australian politics. We see today Anthony Albanese is removing his fellow Left faction member Mark Butler from the environment portfolio in a bid to boost not just Labor’s electability, but his chances of survival. Yet the issue is not just a matter for the ALP.

The Nationals are saying they want to see 800,000 new manufacturing jobs in the next 15 years.  This is less ambitious than at first sight but it would mean over a fifth of new jobs being created in the sector that has seen its share of jobs shrink from 15 to 7 per cent over the past 30 years. 

The idea is to leverage the jobs from our intrinsically low cost energy, which offers Australia the best prospects of…