Anthony Albanese’s bizarre verbal fumble about whales getting tangled in offshore wind farms was discussed on Sky News Australia’s Outsiders where Editor-in-Chief Rowan Dean interviewed One Nation’s candidate for the coal-rich Hunter area, Stuart Bonds.

The interview began with the Prime Minister’s condescending comments during the ABC debate. In response to a question from David Speers about government overriding community concerns about renewable energy, he said:

‘Proper community consultation and environmental approvals… Some of the concern is not real. Whales being unable to steer their way around in the vast Pacific Ocean around a wind tower is not right…’

Mr Dean then asked the One Nation candidate if the Prime Minister was right or wrong. Putting the whales to one side, Mr Bonds addressed the heart of the energy debate:

‘We are shipping coal from the Upper Hunter, we are going down past our now closed down Liddell coal-fired power station, past the gas-fired power station that has no gas, past the proposed wind turbine farm, sending it out up to Japan so they can make cars … electronics … and then they are shipping it back to us and selling it to us. It is just madness. The whole thing doesn’t make any sense to me or the people in the Hunter.’

Which is to say, if this is all about decarbonisation and government-set Net Zero targets as the Labor Party insists, how does it help the world if another country is incurring the emissions on our behalf?

On One Nation’s position regarding the Hunter, Mr Bonds added:

‘We need to build new, clean, coal-fired power stations as our aging fleet retires. So, it is slated that by 2038 there will be no coal-fired power stations left in New South Wales.

‘Now, the Liberals have got a plan, I don’t believe it’s a good plan because it pushes it out until about 2050 until we get a solution to this problem. There is a big hole in that plan and that needs to be plugged up with what works and what works is clean coal-fired power stations.’

In other words, never mind the whales, New South Wales is headed toward an energy crisis within the decade and neither major party has a solution that keeps the lights on.

When you stop and think about the implications, it is scary that the two so-called ‘sensible’ parties of Labor and Liberal created this situation in search of personal power at the expensive of energy.

Rita Panahi then asked the obvious follow-up, ‘What is the solution to the inner-city? That might all be great for the Hunter and people there accept that but we have got the inner-city who are thinking the world’s about to end, global warming is going to see their communities destroyed… It is almost this religious fervour they have for Climate Change. How do you combat that, because that is going to be the reason why the Coalition is refusing to move away from [The Paris Agreement], from Net Zero, they are terrified of that inner-city flank revolting…’

Presumably, the same way you incorporate the beliefs of Flat-Earthers when designing rockets. Not at all.

The temptation is to allow the lights to go off. To teach the disconnected inner-city Labor, Teals, and Greens voters that they have been lied to for over a decade. They should be shown what civilisation looks like without reliable energy and how quickly their comfy life deteriorates without fossil fuels. Reality may change their vote. It is the fastest and ultimately safest long-term strategy.

Of course, you cannot teach these voters a lesson without hurting everyone else and collapsing society. In the real world, leaders are only allowed to hurt people slowly under the excuse of incompetence.

What should happen is political leaders come forward, admit their error, and jointly agree to build baseload power immediately to avert a crisis. A unity ticket on sanity would force the majority of these inner-city voters to think again. That will probably happen eventually, but they will leave it to the last moment so that New South Wales has to frantically hook up an extension cord, power share, and perform African-style blackouts. There will be apologies to the camera, expensive inquiries, policy changes, a new safeguard bureaucracy, and scary power bills. Bookmark this…

Mr Bonds answered more diplomatically than me.

‘Well look, I think the beatings are going to continue until morale improves. You can see the price of everything increasing and increasing… It’s about leadership. You make an argument and you see if you are right. What we are being exposed to is a massive experiment on the Australian people. Our economy … we talk about being a Renewable Energy Superpower well, such a thing does not exist anywhere else in the world … we are sending enough coal overseas to power another 14 Australias.

‘I propose that we keep it here. We burn it here. We power Australia. We give our citizens cheap, reliable power that we know works. We had a functioning manufacturing industry when we were mining coal with horses. Now we use 600-tonne excavators to send out 350-tonne dump trucks in a minute-and-a-half.

‘We have the largest coal export terminal in the world in the Hunter. We have the best coal miners in the world … people don’t know that 32 out of the 39 coal mines in New South Wales are set to close by 2040. By 2050 there will be none.

‘We have been mining coal in the Hunter for 220 years. It was New South Wales’ first export. John Sutherland landed in Newcastle and saw the coal in the cliffs. Since that day we have been mining coal. I propose that we are the cleanest best coal in the world. People want it, we should give it them.’

There are over 125,000 workers left in the coal-mining industry in New South Wales who will all be out of a job unless people like Mr Bonds win over the electorate.

What else are the major parties offering? A lot of talk about transition and nothing in the way of detail.

Labor’s Future Jobs and Investment Authorities is more like a band-aid to stem the wound created by Canberra stupidity. It replaces the equally poorly named Royalties for Rejuvenation and Expert Panels which was created under the Coalition. Renaming stupid ideas is a major part of governing these days.

To give you an example of how foolish these plans are, the government boasts on its website that it can innovate post-mining land use where one scheme involves turning a Hunter coal mine into a motor park resort, because that’s exactly what highly skilled coal miners want to do … tourism. The lack of respect for the working-class is breathtaking.

Believing a theme park will generate comparable revenue to a coal mine is the reason our Treasury is empty.

The Minister for Natural Resources said: ‘Workers and communities across NSW need to know we’ve got their back.’

A knife in their back, maybe. Let’s not pretend the entire Labor machine isn’t moving to erase these people’s livelihoods.

Even the ABC has admitted that New South Wales is staring down a problem, describing the state’s energy supply as ‘tight’.

Premier Chris Minns was scorned in November when, acting on advice from the Australian Market Energy Operator, he asked people to reduce their energy use in peak time to avoid power shortages. What, in a first-world country? In a renewable energy superpower?

Renewable energy enthusiasts are quick to blame ‘aging and unreliable coal-fired power stations’ instead of negligent politicians who refused to replace them on time. That is like saying you want to give up on smartphones because a 10-year-old iPhone has battery issues and a cracked screen. Besides, it’s a bit rich coming from a renewable industry so ‘reliable’ it can be disrupted by a passing cloud.

Our society is energy-hungry.

People might not be happy with expensive power bills, but they will be livid and unforgiving after one or two blackouts. Even the inner-city kids mentioned by Ms Panahi will turn on the Left if they can’t access social media or their music playlist.