Powerlines by Chris Uhlmann

Most Australians don’t realise how close Australia is to a genuine energy security challenge and how some of the policies being proposed today could make it worse. In this episode, Jane Norman, CEO of Amplitude Energy, unpacks the debate around domestic gas reservation and explains why Australia’s abundant gas resources could become either one of our greatest strengths or one of our biggest vulner...

From billion-dollar battery subsidies and COP spending to transmission lines carving through regional communities, Aidan Morrison, Chris Uhlmann and Ben Beattie unpack the forces reshaping Australia’s energy future. This wide-ranging discussion explores the political urgency behind net zero, the economic and technical realities of grid transformation, and the unintended consequences emerging acros...

The Energy Transition Debate: Unpacking Australia's Renewable Energy Policy The Current State of Energy Policy in Australia The past few months have been pivotal for the energy sector in Australia. With rising taxation and the government's push for renewable energy sources, many are wondering about the efficacy and sustainability of these initiatives. The Australian Energy Producers Conference hel...

The Australian Energy Producers conference in South Australia last week came as the world grapples with its biggest energy shock in decades, while at home the oil and gas industry is being cast as both saviour and cash cow. In the lead-up to the federal budget there was a populist push for a 25 per cent gas tax that industry warned would crush investment. The Albanese government stepped back from...

In 2017, I left the ABC and walked down the corridor in Parliament House to begin again as political editor for Nine News. This was the first story I filed for Nine. At the time, my new bosses were a little bemused by it, but they humoured me. I don’t claim credit for the insight. I was convinced by the power of an argument I had heard from a man I had come to know well, former fighter pilot and r...

The Gulf war has exposed two hard truths: military force still shapes the world, and hydrocarbons still power it. Coal, oil and gas remain the foundation of modern life, embedded in everything from food and medicine to transport, industry and household goods. When oil and gas prices rise, the cost of living rises with them. Australia is especially vulnerable because it still depends overwhelmingly...

Dr Oleksandra Molloy is not a soldier. But war has defined her work, reshaped her life, and heightened her fears for the West. A native of Kyiv, now based at the University of New South Wales, Molloy’s research has focused on aviation, emerging technologies, and the changing face of modern warfare. Her early work was on developing the skills of pilots. “I’ve been interested in aviation for a long...

Canberra warns that our region faces the gravest military threat since World War II. But defence spending suggests it doesn’t believe it. Peter Jennings, director of Strategic Analysis Australia, told Powerlines the gap between words and actions is unsustainable. “To use an old Trotskyism… we may not be interested in a war, but war may well be interested in us.” In an interview conducted before Is...

Joe Hockey says it is time for governments to get out of the way of energy producers to allow industry to drive Australian productivity and help keep the nation wealthy. Speaking at the Australian Energy Producers conference in Brisbane, the former Treasurer and Ambassador to the United States said the country is drowning in regulation. “The cry of energy producers in Australia should be certainty...

Australia’s competitive edge has long been its vast natural resources and access to cheap, abundant energy. But Samantha McCulloch, Chief Executive of Australian Energy Producers, says we risk squandering that advantage. In a wide-ranging Powerlines conversation, McCulloch offers a clear-eyed assessment of the current paradox: this nation depends on gas for export dollars and to keep the lights on...

From a ringside seat in Australian government departments, David Pearl watched the nation lurch from rational economic policymaking into what he calls “a moral panic.” Pearl’s experience is broad: he is a former senior Treasury official, economic adviser to a future Labor Prime Minister, and a diplomat posted to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at the dawn of globa...

We tend to think of conflict between states as something that arrives with a bang: bombs falling, missiles fired, ships sinking, or borders breached. Today, it might come as a whisper in the wires: our power flickering out, our water supply cut, our communications down. Katherine Mansted fears we are not ready for that kind of fight. Mansted is executive director of Cyber Intelligence at CyberCX,...

Jennifer Parker’s assessment of Australia’s strategic vulnerability is brutally simple: to defeat us, you don’t need to set foot on our soil; just cut our sea-based supply lines. Parker speaks from the experience of a naval officer who served in the South China Sea, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and at the heart of maritime operations. In a wide-ranging interview for Power Lines , Parker offered...

Labor’s victory in Australia’s federal election is still being counted, both in scale and its place in history. With the party set to command more than 90 seats in the 150-member lower house, it is arguably the biggest win for Labor since Federation, 124 years ago. Barring a catastrophe, it is now set up to govern for at least the next six years. This result elevates Prime Minister Anthony Albanes...

The Albanese government’s failure to hold a Royal Commission into Australia’s response to COVID-19 will leave a historic stain on its record. We lost the opportunity to shine a bright light on the worst crisis the nation has faced this century. We lost the chance to test what worked and what didn’t. It is a betrayal of a future generation, in defence of today’s politicians, doctors, and bureaucrat...

It takes more than 25 minerals to build the phone in your pocket, but few ever pause to wonder how it’s made. It is true of so much of modern life. Our largely urban society is so disconnected from its sources of wealth, food, and energy that many are now actively voting against them. The Minerals Council of Australia is trying to turn perceptions around, but it is pushing against a wall of ignora...

In late October 2023, while filming the documentary Forged in Fire , I sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Our director/producer/cameraman, Michael Fardell, had asked the president’s office if he could do as much of the interview as possible in English, as we wanted him to speak directly to an Australian audience. His office was reluctant. This was no small ask because English is...

There’s an old line, attributed to the American humorist Josh Billings: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” That sentiment cuts to the heart of my conversation with Matt Ridley, zoologist, science writer, hereditary peer, and long-time observer of the triumphs and follies of human reason. Ridley’s latest book, Birds, Sex and Be...

Earlier this year, I spoke with Dr. Bjorn Peters—a physicist-turned-energy economist who once believed in the promise of Germany’s energy revolution. Back in 2008, as a senior adviser in Deutsche Bank’s asset management arm, Peters helped direct billions of euros into wind and solar projects. But the deeper he looked, the more sceptical he became about the wisdom of building an electricity grid ar...

Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when the world first committed to tackling climate change, carbon emissions have continued to rise every year with just two exceptions: the 2009 global financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic. In both cases, emissions fell only because of wrenching economic dislocation. And while much has been said about the energy transition, the numbers tell a more stubborn story....

“Hope is not a strategy.” With that one line, former Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo cuts to the heart of Australia’s strategic complacency. In a wide-ranging interview for Powerlines , Pezzullo lays out a devastating account of how successive governments have failed to prepare the nation for a far more perilous world. The warnings were there. In 2009, Pezzullo led the drafting of a Defence W...

In far north Queensland, in the ancient forests of the Atherton Tablelands, Steven Nowakowski has spent three decades fighting to protect the natural world. A wilderness photographer and lifelong environmentalist, he once stood as a Greens candidate. Now he finds himself in open conflict with those who claim to be saving the planet. Steven and I met in 2024, while filming The Real Cost of Net Zero...

As Australians head toward a federal election, former Senate president and High Commissioner to Canada Scott Ryan offers a measured but clear-eyed assessment: the old certainties in Australian politics are breaking down — and the international order that once underpinned them may not return. In a wide-ranging interview, Ryan provided a granular, state-by-state breakdown of the electoral battlegrou...

At Thursday’s National Press Club energy debate, I asked Energy Minister Chris Bowen a simple question: “Have electricity prices risen on your watch?” Once again, he refused to concede it, saying only that prices were higher than the government would like. On that, we can all agree. But here’s the point. In December 2021, Bowen released modelling that claimed Labor’s energy plan would reduce house...

Ever stopped to think where your lifestyle comes from? How the modern world is made? How it runs? Most of us don’t. Least of all the small group of activists that gathers outside Australia’s federal parliament on sitting days, surrounded by hydrocarbon-rich signs, demanding an immediate end to all fossil fuels. One of their number identifies as a marsupial, kitted out in an ill-fitting polyester s...