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This podcast digs into power, pain and politics in Australia today. Each episode features communications strategist Nelli Stevenson in sharp, funny conversations with expert guests such as energy analysts, social commentators, research experts, and environmental campaigners. If you're over jargon, both-sidesing, carefully crafted talking points, and instead want sharp, grounded conversations that join the dots between personal pain and political power, this is for you.
Nelli (00:00)
The Nelli Stevenson show is recorded on Wurundjeri Country.
Nelli (00:16)
Welcome to the Nelli Stevenson Show. Today's episode is brought to you by the fact that I pay more tax than major multinational gas companies do in Australia. So you may have noticed that recently debate has been absolutely raging about the idea that we finally need a fair return on our gas in Australia, that we're getting completely and utterly ripped off by multinational gas companies who dig our gas out of the ground.
Pay next to no tax and ship eighty percent of it overseas.
Now, the going rate that people from trade unions, the climate movement, the crossbench, energy analysts are all calling for is a flat 25% export tax.
And so I'm finding this a particularly interesting moment in history.
Nelli (00:55)
in over a decade of working in climate and energy in Australia as a communications strategist, I've actually never seen anything like this. I'm acutely aware of public opinion as part of my work, and I know for certain that Australians are deeply disinterested in energy policy. No matter how engaged they are in climate, they really don't give a shit about coal, about gas, about energy policy more broadly. It's just a really uninteresting topic.
And so not only are we seeing an overwhelming amount of people getting involved in energy policy, they're also loudly calling for a new tax, which traditionally Australians don't very much like. And a lot of people are seeing this 25% export tax figure and thinking, well, hang on, Norway taxes their gas industry at 78%. Why not go the whole hog?
And so I've been dying to talk to our guest today. He's uniquely placed to comment on this as an Australian energy analyst living in Norway. Today's guest is Ketan Joshi, and I'm thrilled to have him on the show.
Nelli (01:52)
Ketan Joshi, welcome to the show.
Ketan Joshi (01:54)
Hello, it's really lovely to be here.
Nelli (01:56)
Thank you so much for coming on.
Ketan, you're based in Norway. You're an Australian living in Norway.
When you watch the Australian gas debate, what seems the most bizarre to you?
Ketan Joshi (02:07)
I can relate to a lot of the weirdness of the Australian gas debate because it shows up here in Norway, particularly this whole absurd idea that somehow we're kind of running short on gas, right? It manifests here as this whole idea that Norway is the savior of Europe. We're kind of like, you know, riding into Europe on our fossil fuel horse and saving everybody from having to rely on Russian gas.
you know, ⁓ yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Nelli (02:31)
the the bad gas as as opposed to the good
Norwegian gas, the bad Russian gas.
Ketan Joshi (02:36)
Yeah, our democratic and ⁓ clean gas, which basically is the same shit when you burn it as Russian gas, is is just amazing and heroic and we are kind of like selflessly saving Europe. And it's based on this idea of like, you know, there's just not enough gas, right? Like you you need to we can need to keep digging it up. We need to keep extracting, ⁓ and the only way to do that is if the experts in digging up fossil fuels just do more of it.
Nelli (02:48)
Right.
Ketan Joshi (03:04)
And so like I'm sure all of that sounds really familiar, right? Which is like the gas industry in Australia. You know, like you see stuff like, ⁓ you know, we have such a shortage of gas in Australia, you know, there's just not enough. And it is so absurd. Like, I think that could possibly be the worst lie that they
Nelli (03:08)
⁓ no, I've never heard any of this before.
Ketan Joshi (03:23)
is just this idea, like they export such a huge volume of
like working at a toilet paper factory and just
using the toilets in the office and they're just like, I'm sorry, we ran out of toilet paper. Like, I don't know how to fix it. It's just a total mystery. Yes. Nice Seinfeld reference. Very nice. yeah, it's just absurd, right? Like you just it makes absolutely no sense. and that the argument in itself is absurd, but what makes it like tragic comic, like an episode of
Nelli (03:36)
Not even one ply? You can't spare a square
Ketan Joshi (03:52)
is that this is like
A widely accepted argument. You read this in like media outlets and they're like, yes, we do have a gas shortage. That's true. What a reasonable thing to say. And I'm just
how can you treat that as like a normal business statement that you just everybody kind of accepts as a given? ⁓ I cannot it just blows my mind. And so yeah, I can like I reckon that's the one thing like when I look at the Australian gas debate and I look at the Norwegian slash European gas debate.
That is just this one commonality where you have the whole thing is predicated on an absurd premise. and it's kind of shared between the two countries that everyone's like, let's just treat this really absurd premise as if it's just a normal thing and never question it.
Nelli (04:32)
It's unbelievable. And so so what has been happening in Australia, as you well know, is that suddenly
Everyone's really getting behind this idea of a 25% gas export
in my line of work, I'm really deeply aware of social license to operate and how much of a social license the gas industry has created for itself in Australia through, I'm gonna just call it, through propaganda, through ⁓ disinformation, through misleading advertising, through cherry-picking data. And what I'm curious to know is when
People in this conversation in Australia start saying, Well, twenty-five percent enough, fuck it, let's go the full Norway, let's let it rip and go to seventy-five percent. What does that do to the gas industry's social license?
Ketan Joshi (05:17)
the gas industry here in Norway already has, you know, a really like an iron grip on society and culture. it is remarkable how hard it is to avoid any of its presence, no matter what you do or which thing you speak. I I'm speaking at a at a conference tomorrow and one of the sponsors is, you know, Norway's state owned fossil fuel
And if I were to set as a standard, like don't do any public engagements with the involvement of the fossil fuel industry,
would not do any public engagements. I would like I would just I would kind of have to sink to the bottom of the ocean. And I kind of feel like they would prefer
Nelli (05:43)
Quick joke. Mm mm.
Ketan Joshi (05:51)
cannot participate unless you accept some level of relationship with this industry. The personal benefits that I experience in my life here in Norway ⁓ stem
tax revenue that most of which is coming from the fossil fuel industry. And so the childcare benefits, the
education, all these things are, you know, largely related to that line item in our budget that comes from revenues from the fossil fuel industry. Our neighbors, like Sweden and Denmark and Finland,
have good welfare systems.
and they don't have massive fossil fuel industry industries. So I I really point to them very frequently and say,
You can have good welfare and you don't need to
world's most dangerous product to get it. and I really try to enforce that, right? Because our welfare system is not a product of fossil fuels, it's a product of the Scandinavian brain, right? Like this is
it's done
and so you kind of have this idea in the country, this feeling among a lot of people that like.
You know, if you were to stop exploration of new fossil fuels or even, you
for the phase down of the existing fossil fuel industry, we have this anxiety, like, no, we would lose our welfare and we would lose all this stuff. You can find government web pages where they literally depict in a cartoon story life without fossil fuels.
This is still live on the government website where people are literally in caves and you know they can't operate their mobile phones or whatever. It's just it's ridiculous, right?
so the answer to your question is we are influenced by this. It it is part of our mindset, is that Norway's fossil fuel industry.
gives us the quality of our lives. and it's just not true. ⁓ we it like it's it's literally true in that the money flows from the fossil fuel industry into our budget, but it doesn't have to be that
Nelli (07:37)
Jim Charm has just handed down the budget recently and I was quite surprised looking at the pie chart of where the money comes from, just how much of it is actually income tax. so often
on online conversations you see Australians kind of sniping at Americans going, we got a socialist Medicare system over here, you know, I don't go bankrupt because I got a broken leg. a lot of that is actually coming from income tax in Australia, right? Like it's not even coming from the supposed, you know, cherry picked however many billions of dollars that the gas lobby reckons it it it gives into public coffers
going back to this tax debate, so you've previously described Norway as a great example of taxing fossil fuels and a terrible example of winding them down. How can both be true at the same time?
Ketan Joshi (08:28)
Yeah, we we implemented a very strict tax on our fossil fuel revenues a long time ago, right? I think this is really Norway's greatest trick was doing it early and and doing it in a in a very significant way, right? Like around 70% of the revenues is is taxed. Like that's that's very significant. And
other thing that we've done is that the cash that that stems that flows from that, we put it into a piggy bank.
and that piggy bank is called the oil fund or ⁓ Nordgus ⁓ investment bank, ⁓ NBIM we call it. and this facility becomes a pot of cash that invests in things,
And so what happens is that we've kind of built up this multi-trillion dollar investment vehicle. It's massive, it's the world's biggest by a huge margin. and
we invest in companies and the returns that we get from those investments.
That is get that gets put into our annual budget. So we're not kind of taking from the piggy bank, we're taking
added stuff on top. Because
Nelli (09:21)
Profits of the piggy bank. Like the interest in
Ketan Joshi (09:24)
that's what funds our welfare system and all of all of that stuff,
and what happens there is you get this sense of national ownership over the over the oil fund. and you get this anxiety that I mentioned earlier that was that basically relates to this feeling of like it has to keep growing, it has to keep getting bigger.
so there's a campaign right now happening from Norway's government to push for more drilling in the Arctic. and you know, I'm signing on to an Yeah.
Nelli (09:48)
⁓ fabulous fucking fabulous idea.
Let's drill the Arctic
Ketan Joshi (09:53)
again,
it's being justified on this whole idea of like, just Europe doesn't have enough fossil fuels. What are we gonna
We know what we should do, right? Like we just need to use less fossil fuels rather than extract more of them. yeah, exactly. And no and Europe is as fast as Europe is going, it's nowhere near as fast as it possibly could be with actual good policies to protect Europe from fossil fuels. and so, you know, you look at us domestically, right, and you think like
Nelli (10:02)
I can get off them.
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (10:19)
Why do Norwegians support drilling in the Arctic? It's just like I I was so shocked when I found this out because the Arctic feels like such an intensely sensitive natural area and that people would just kind of understand that, the only way I can figure it out is like, we just need to keep filling up the piggy bank. But there was a study
Done I think actually probably a a year ago now or a little bit more,
just kind of modeled like what what would happen if Norway just stopped exploring for new fossil fuels, right? Like not talking about like winding down the existing industry, but just stop exploring for new ones. And of course, right? Like we can just live off the investments in the oil
forever, and it makes almost no difference,
The harm that comes from those fossil fuels
far, far worse than whatever benefits that we get here in in Norway from just that little extra bit in our piggy bank that we're kind of become addicted to filling up.
think that is why
have this situation where we correctly deserve
just clamping so much control and tax on the industry
it has kind of become
separated from the urgency of climate
you need to recouple those things if you were to reap the full benefits of having such a good amount of tax on the fossil fuel industry.
Nelli (11:32)
to the industry in Australia. looking at the news, the Australian gas lobby keeps using these words like investment, security, reliability. What are those words doing politically?
Ketan Joshi (11:43)
Yeah.
Yeah, okay, so what we've seen around the world, it's not just in Australia, but there's a been a big push towards I've seen
words and some similar ones sovereignty,
national security. I think you mentioned security, and and there are a couple of others that sort of basically all mean the same thing, which is
world's geopolitics are getting messier and more unstable and scarier, and therefore our walls need to be bigger.
we need to be more independent, we need to stop relying on other countries, and we kind of need to have more strength as a unit, as a global unit, a
and Norway you hear these lines in Norway as well, and in Europe and in other parts of the world. Yeah, pretty much, right? and particularly Norway is trying to sell gas to Europe, right? Basically saying, We're a reliable partner. You can rely on us. We're your friend. We're Europe's friend. We're on the team.
Nelli (12:20)
Same lines.
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (12:33)
up, you know, and include Norway. Yeah.
Nelli (12:32)
We're not on the coin, but we're on the team.
Ketan Joshi (12:36)
And we're not in the EU either, but that's a bit of a sensitive point.
Nelli (12:38)
And that's
Ketan Joshi (12:42)
yeah. my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That line is absurd everywhere,
Nelli (12:39)
why the Euro looks like a dick, everybody. 'Cause Norway you cut Norway off and it looks like a dick.
Ketan Joshi (12:48)
absurd on its own merits because of course relying on fuel imports and and or exports from other countries, as we know,
the exact cause of the problem here.
is the cause of the crisis that we're experiencing, that everybody was relying on either selling or importing fossil fuels to other countries. and that is why we're all suffering. Here in Norway, we have protests against the costs of diesel.
Think about that, right? Like Norway, with all the oil and gas that we sell to Europe, there are protests by farmers driving their big tractors down the the main street in our city because nobody is actually immune, right? Like you think, like, yeah, Norway's this amazing fossil fuel
gonna be protected. That's not how it plays out, right? Like we're interconnected into the power system in Europe, we're interconnected to like just fuel and trade flows, we're exposed to all of the high prices that we both benefit and suffer from.
Nelli (13:30)
Mm.
Mm.
mm. Mm.
Ketan Joshi (13:40)
This is not good. Like this is not a a like
a reliable or secure or like sovereign situation. It's actually really, really bad.
Nelli (13:47)
But it's like
just like here in Australia, right? Like we are one of the biggest exporters of LNG of gas. And in Victoria, there has been talk of us buying our own gas back from Japan. So shipping it from Queensland, somewhere in Asia, and then buying it back and shipping it directly to Victoria. Like how the fuck are we in such a humiliating situation?
Ketan Joshi (13:59)
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's the first part, right? Which is that it's just on its merits. It's this very it's a very silly
the flip side is that there are countries that do not care about climate change at all
are now recognizing that fossil fuels suck in about a million different other ways,
and so China being held on this leash by the US for its oil imports that it and China still has a lot of like fossil fuel cars, right? Like they have ridiculous.
Nelli (14:35)
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (14:36)
ridiculously good EV deployment. I I cannot believe it. If you'd asked me five years ago to predict it, I would have said
Nelli (14:39)
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (14:42)
not gonna happen. ⁓ yeah. Yeah.
Nelli (14:42)
and even the amount of them you see here in Australia now, like I'm like
salivating over the new BYDs that are coming out. I'm looking at this SeaLion I'm like, Yes, that's my car.
Ketan Joshi (14:52)
Yes.
Yeah. And so they're profiting from the sale, the export of those. China is now has a reason to cut its oil use that is really much more material and immediate than the climate imperative. if you were to ask me which one is more important, of course I would say the climate imperative because that's just my fundamental like focus.
But I would be wrong about what feels more immediate and causes more immediate
in that country, right? Like and you could and I'm not saying this to like talk on their behalf. This is something borne out by the numbers and the decisions that they're making. their cuts in
Nelli (15:23)
Mm, mm.
Ketan Joshi (15:31)
oil use in
are really, really amazing. The coal is maybe not so good because they have a lot of domestic coal reserves, right?
they don't need to ship it in from Australia quite as much as as they have been in the past.
So like those lines about like security and reliability,
know, you could you argue against them as as like we should, because they're wrong and they have a weird amount of cultural power that they don't
it's absurd, right? Like the whole fossil fuel economy
What is it, like forty percent of the world's shipping is transporting fossil fuels from one place to another?
the hell? Yeah.
Nelli (16:05)
fucking grim. And like as as an oceans campaigner
from way back, like what that does to whales, the noise that creates, the ship strikes, the like it's fucking horrendous, these poor creatures.
Ketan Joshi (16:12)
Yeah. It's so bad. Yeah.
Nelli (16:23)
something else I wanted to ask you about is that Australians are often told that if we ask for a fairer share of our own resources, that
corporations will get scared and investment will dry up. what are your thoughts on that?
Ketan Joshi (16:35)
the gas companies that are investing in Australia
not doing it to help the Australian community, right? Like I just I see this so much. Yeah, sorry to bring this back to data centers. I've got data centers on the brain right now, but tech companies are doing such a similar gambit, right? Where they basically talk
Nelli (16:41)
No?
Ketan Joshi (16:51)
how
what they do.
Provides some sort of magical and necessary benefit to society, right? So often they'll talk about like jobs or like the tax revenues they pay when they build something. ⁓ they talk about the sort of like money flowing into the country from their investment. but then you look at the actual numbers
and and and it's kind of table scraps, right? Like they're kind of just shoving off a little bit of extra shit on the side and going, you keep that tiny amount.
And we'll keep the rest for ourselves, right? Like, I'm ⁓ I'm I'm sure you've seen, all those amazing Punters Politics videos where he basically just explains the the math of this,
Nelli (17:25)
that's so good.
Ketan Joshi (17:28)
like you watch them and you're
Nelli (17:28)
math doesn't math.
Ketan Joshi (17:30)
can just sense that
Nelli (17:30)
math does not math.
Ketan Joshi (17:31)
outrage is so genuine because
it's such a
right? And it's kind of true in the literal sense of like, yes, those are table scraps, and if you like table scraps, maybe.
That's something that you'll be satisfied with. But if you look at it from a
Nelli (17:44)
Please, sir, may I have some more?
Ketan Joshi (17:46)
exactly.
but if you look at it from the bigger perspective, and data centers in Australia are kind of doing the same argument where they're like, yeah, yeah, you know, we're gonna bring in all this like investment, X, Y, and
they're not bringing it in, right? Like they are keeping it for themselves, it's going to other countries.
and so the whole argument of of look how good we are, we're kind of like this gear in your economy that you cannot remove, otherwise everything collapses.
That's not real. and not only is it not real, the damage that they do in running their business, it's actually a net harm to
Right? Because even though they'll give you the table scraps, they're kind of stealing from your other resources of X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's like fuel or water or air or climate.
such a huge lie that it's almost hard to know what to feel.
looking at Australia from a distance, maybe this is like a positive thing.
feel like those lines worked really, really well in the sort of 2010s, ⁓ where it kind of felt like almost, you know, the the fossil fuel lobby would do like a press release
Nelli (18:40)
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (18:45)
it would just be packed with like all all the lines that you basically said, right? Which is like we're bringing in all this cash, we're bringing all these jobs and investment.
And you and it was just like, what can you do? You know, like I'm sure you had this feeling, you know, sometimes. maybe it something is changing in Australia because it feels like those lines, maybe it's like the sheer power of, the gas tax campaign, the social media campaigns,
and just the tone and the influence of saying, No, no, no, we're not like making a moral argument here. We are disproving a lie.
We're kind of showing that they're lying to you.
Nelli (19:18)
Yeah.
They've been taking the piss.
Ketan Joshi (19:23)
right. and so
framing it all as education that's fighting against a cruel and damaging falsehood has been, I think, which is really powerful. I got an ad served to me on my LinkedIn.
and it was an Australian energy producers, which is the Gas Lobby
it was an ad yeah. Yeah, it was great. It was so good. I was like, Thank you. I actually wanted to watch this. and it was a guy, they got an actor who looks a lot like the Punters Politics guy with like slightly different hair colour. ⁓ and he's holding a beer in his hand, and he's like, Well, I'm gonna tell you the truth, you know, let me tell you all the corrections and the facts about, you know, whatever.
Nelli (19:39)
guys, do better targeting. Don't waste your money.
Ketan Joshi (20:01)
And it just like it was so soulless and like I looked at it and I was like, is that AI generated or did they get an actor for that? And it was real, right? Like they actually got an actor and they had a script, ⁓ but it was so without life and pointless that I immediately assumed a machine did it, not a human. and I think that like I think that's a
Nelli (20:20)
Wow That's a savage take.
Ketan Joshi (20:23)
Yeah. But I
Nelli (20:23)
You know, you know, Ketan Ketan, I just gotta stop you
there. There is a human being with feelings who created that ad. There is there is some
Ketan Joshi (20:26)
Yeah. I'm sorry. I I'm sorry, a gas lobby person.
Nelli (20:33)
there is some poor intern thinking this is my big break at an advertising agency. ⁓ it's a big ad for the gas companies. ⁓
Ketan Joshi (20:36)
Yes.
my god.
Nelli (20:42)
There is a human being with feelings.
Ketan Joshi (20:43)
⁓
Nelli (20:43)
There is an actor who is employed. And you know why I could tell that that was that ad was real and that it wasn't fake? Is because the grading was so bad. AI is really good at saturating with colours, but this was really flat and really grey. It was like whoever filmed it, whoever the
Ketan Joshi (20:51)
Yeah, ⁓ yeah.
True. That's true. It was like a Nordic
crime drama.
Nelli (20:59)
Yeah, like they just they just left it really flat,
like straight out of the back of the black magic. Didn't even like bump up the vibrance or anything. It was wild. But hey, I'm really curious. So something that frustrates me is is watching the media and
Ketan Joshi (21:03)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nelli (21:13)
Watching the media still accept, and I'm not talking national media because I I monitor the media because I work in WA and the NT as well. I monitor the media in both of those states also. And I so often see these gas talking points just being taken at face value by journalists and not challenged and not pushed. What is the one gas lobby talking point you wished journalists would stop taking at face value?
Ketan Joshi (21:38)
Gosh, that is such a tough question. only one. Okay. yes. Okay, no, I know what it is. I know what it is. and I'm gonna try and talk about it briefly, and I'm gonna try not to
Nelli (21:40)
Only one.
Ketan Joshi (21:50)
have my head explode on camera.
Nelli (21:49)
Reinforce the frame. Don't reinforce the frame.
Ketan Joshi (21:51)
won't reinforce the frame and I won't get so mad that that I just explode. Yeah, okay. So so everybody would have heard this in some format, basically, because it's old, right? Like this is not a new talking point. But
But and everybody from the Prime Minister down, in the government, ⁓ in, you know, many different political parties, even sometimes in the energy industry, says this, which is
need gas for the renewable energy transition. and it has gotten to the point where people who I love and respect, my friends and colleagues in the clean energy industry, have sometimes started treating gas like it's not a fossil fuel, but rather a clean energy or a climate solution.
Nelli (22:20)
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (22:29)
I get so intensely mad in a bunch of different ways, but to briefly explain why it's wrong, you do not need gas. Gas is a fossil fuel. We are moving away from fossil fuels.
Like the reason you're doing the thing is the reason that you don't keep the gas, right? Like the re like we're getting rid of fossil fuels because they cause harm. and so that's the first point, is that is that when you burn it, it it hurts people. That's why we're not doing it. The second point, and I think this is the one that resonates more with people, is that that line is being proved wrong at a rate
Nelli (22:43)
Mm.
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (22:58)
And a scale that that none of us imagined, right? Again, maybe I was like too cynical, you know, but I just wouldn't have predicted it, right? Like if you'd asked me to predict the magnitude of battery installations in Australia or California or Spain or like just any of these countries where it's ramping up like that, like a bloody straight line upwards, I I would have been like, ⁓ no, it would be more gradual than that, you know,
Nelli (23:23)
it's making the the argument for all these gas peaker plants look so impotent. It's like we we've got this very erect line here and then this very small and shrinking argument for gas peaker plants.
Ketan Joshi (23:31)
Yes, it's nuts.
And and and and so like
Australia announced a week ago we're expanding our proposed gas peaker from six hundred and fifty megawatts to one point three bloody gigawatts, like doubling it in size, right? And I'm like, wow, how can you possibly justify that? Yeah, right? Doubling the emissions basically, whatever emissions it'll have, it's double. and and I'm just like, how can they justify that?
Nelli (23:47)
That's a significant increase.
Ketan Joshi (23:57)
And how can that kind of just be like reported on as like, yeah, you know, well, we are gonna need gas as a transition, blah blah.
So the people in charge of the power grid, they have to plan for the future, right? So they make these
sort of forecasts or predictions. And they are kind of like notoriously friendly with gas, right? Like they they're kind of like open to the idea of using gas. And even they, in their models, cannot envisage a future where we use more gas on the power grid, right? Even they are like, I would argue, excessively generous about having gas there on the grid. The whole idea is that you balance out wind and solar with having a bit of gas when there's no wind and no sun.
But batteries are doing that exact purpose at a scale that is unbelievable, right? Like the reports from that same grid manager, they are showing that batteries are cutting into the gas and it they're cutting into gas at the best possible time, which is the evening peak when we're all using the most amount of energy. That is when gas makes everything the most expensive because they're called on it. There's like the emergency backup, and emergency backup is
Nelli (24:57)
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (25:02)
But batteries are like, well, we charged up with solar in the middle of the day. So we basically paid bloody nothing to charge our batteries. So we'll charge you a buck, you know? Like we'll charge you almost nothing. So of course they're crowding out gas in the evening, because gas is like, we're gonna charge you a huge amount of money because gas is very expensive right now. ⁓ and so yeah. So so when like Albanese or Angus Taylor or Pauline Hanson, or like anyone says you need gas for the energy transition.
Nelli (25:18)
You can't sit with us. Go away, gas
Ketan Joshi (25:30)
First of all, they're probably talking about some gas field that is like 50 times more gas than what is modeled by that grid operator, even in their generous models, right? Secondly,
is going from like a misleading talking point to being an extremely serious and significant lie. And I don't use the word lie lightly at all, right? I cannot believe how this keeps being said.
and people are like, yeah, that's true. You do need gas with the energy transition. It's no, like you not only do you not need it, we never needed gas with the energy transition,
we
Sorry.
Nelli (26:03)
Anthony Albanese is lying to
us.
Ketan Joshi (26:05)
Anthony Albanese is absolutely lying when he says that we need gas to balance out the energy transition or the the deployment of renewables. That is such a huge lie. You do not need it. You really, really don't need it, right? Batteries are like designed perfectly to get rid of gas reliance. what Australia definitely does need is more like bulk renewables, right? Like
Australia really, really needs more construction of wind and solar to get rid of coal. That is the other side of the story, right? Coal is not being phased out as fast as it should be. The reason for that is not because coal is so good that we need it for longer, but because we need more wind and solar, like to be built more quickly.
Nelli (26:51)
so talking about Anthony Albanese, I'm really curious as to why Australian journalists don't interrogate the motives of some of the decisions that the Labor government makes on gas policy.
that that really stunned me
on in my career, I saw a report from market forces that showed just how much money from the the coal, oil and gas companies.
That the Labor Party takes. And it's in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And then when you count dark money, if not millions of dollars, why is it, do you think, that Australian journalists just don't better connect the dots and interrogate some of those policies policy decisions?
Ketan Joshi (27:30)
the nicest way to put it is that there is a real bias towards the status quo. I don't think that like I don't sort of look at those stories where they just ignore such a clear and significant motivation as a relevant factor, as being really pro-fossil fuels, right?
You don't get the vibe that most of them actually genuinely love the gas industry or the coal industry. I think it's more the case that they genuinely love centrist ideology relating to just keeping things as they are, and not really challenging the structure or the systems that are in place today. And challenging this idea that you can impugn someone's motivation, that you can interrogate it.
And go, let's look at the bigger picture and where the money's flowing and what might be the cause of this, is seen as almost rude because it's not what he said. Albanese didn't stand up and literally say, Hey everyone, I'm announcing this new gas field because I was donated, you know, two million bucks by whatever this like, you know, fossil fuel company. Yeah. Like he doesn't say it. And there's this literal mindedness around it where it's like, well, if he didn't say it, how could we possibly know?
Nelli (28:26)
'Cause Woodside said so.
Ketan Joshi (28:37)
⁓ and and you know what, sometimes you kind of just have to look at the system or the structure and say, part of the problem here is the system. And if they were to name the system as the problem, then all of a sudden you can't really push for the status quo. You suddenly become an activist and there's a real fear of being seen as an activist among not just Australian journalists, but many other journalists,
Nelli (28:51)
Mm.
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (28:59)
The thing that I like the most about journalism is when they become active in pushing for changes to society for the better. They do it in almost every other area. Look at like medicine or health reporting. ⁓
Nelli (29:06)
Mm, mm.
Mm.
Ketan Joshi (29:12)
they will report on like a disease as being bad, even though that's being activist against the disease. that's just not unusual. But for fossil fuels, it's like, no, no, no, we
really interrogate it too much, or we don't want to be seen as biased.
Nelli (29:21)
It's too political.
speaking of balanced and centrist worldviews, One Nation has just dropped its new gas policy. it's Norway inspired where gas corporations get a 30% tax break in exchange for
Australia having the option to take a 30% stake in new projects. What is your take on that?
Ketan Joshi (29:43)
it's fascinating. It's really, really fascinating, right? I think you'd be hard pressed to find a political party in Australia with such intense, clear climate denialism, but a policy on fossil fuels that is actually
on the face of it, like an outright, crony capitalist fossil fuel subsidy. So I think a lot of people probably saw that announcement and they were like, that's interesting. It's kind of like nuanced, you know, like they're almost like wanting to nationalize the the coal and gas industry. But then you spend like half a second looking at it and it's like, no, no, it's it's a fossil fuel subsidy. they really just want to dump the risk.
That fossil fuel companies in Australia are collecting like fucking coins, you know, And the industry is desperate to not hold that risk themselves. They want to dump it on the public. And one nation, I mean, I don't know if they've got like a new political advisor or something, but like it was clever in I mean that in the worst possible way, I in the most evil way, to basically label it, yeah, really diabolical.
Nelli (30:35)
Diabolical.
Ketan Joshi (30:39)
To label it with this very genuine push to put real responsibility back on the fossil fossil fuel companies, but the actual details are like just dumping the risk of stranded assets and this bubble of of huge fossil fuel projects onto the public, right? And so of course the fossil fuel industry welcomed it, right? Like the fact that the fossil fuel industry welcomed this,
Hanson spoke at the Australian
Nelli (31:02)
Shows you all you need to know about the policy, right?
Ketan Joshi (31:05)
It's so bad. it was so lovely to see so much like direct criticism there was a great video from Get Up, from the guy who's in all those Get Up videos.
it was so great because he was just like, nope, this is a fossil fuel subsidy. Kind of just been
what one nation is proposing is basically nothing like Norway, right? Like it's just ridiculous to compare it to
have massive government intervention and state control. Yes, Norway and one nation both do not want to wind down the fossil fuel industry to protect our safety. But that's about the only thing that's in common there, right? one nation's position. When I read it, I was
that's
the United States
which is that they're not totally against government intervention either. What they want is the government to intervene so that the companies are protected from the
that is the state control being proposed here, right? Which is that yes, the state is involved very heavily, but the whole point is to
make sure that the rich executives get as much cash as possible when all the walls inevitably come crashing down. They are planning for the collapse of the fossil fuel industry. One nation and Trump want the industry protected from accountability and and from public outrage. I was so shocked when I saw that because I was like, you sneaky bastards. Just labeling it with like the bloody Norway thing.
because that is not that is just not what we do here, right? as much as I have criticisms for Norway's structure and its attitudes towards oil and gas, we're not the US.
the US is a very different style. And I kinda wish that like media outlets had recognized the trick that one nation was pulling there. I mean, this is a gripe that I've had since I was, you know, a tiny child in Australia, right? Which is that one nation really doesn't get the scrutiny that it deserves. ⁓
media.
Nelli (32:47)
Absolutely
Ketan Joshi (32:48)
but yeah.
Nelli (32:48)
it's because people don't take
them seriously and it's like we've had not one but two ⁓ MRP polls, which it's a public opinion poll that uses a shit ton of modelling to predict seat by seat outcomes if an election were held today. And we've had not one but two MRP polls come out that show that one nation, if an election would be held today, one nation would be the opposition.
Ketan Joshi (33:02)
Mm.
Nelli (33:10)
that is, I don't know if you've seen those, I'll pop them up on screen. Absolutely fucking terrifying stuff. And so we're in a position now where the media is used to not taking One Nation seriously and used to not applying the level of scrutiny that they should apply to a party that could plausibly be the opposition at the next after the next election.
Ketan Joshi (33:10)
Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe that. Yeah. Have seen it.
Yeah. I have to mention as well, you know, I grew up in Australia as a little brown dude, you know, in the nineteen nineties and the two thousands. And you know, One Nation and Pauline Hanson were prominent from the moment we arrived in the mid-1990s. she has been a force in Australian politics for my entire
childhood plus my entire like sort of awakened political life when I joined the wind industry and and politics. and I've been very genuinely scared of both ideologies that that she and her party bring to Australian politics, which is A significantly worsened racism, ⁓ and B, fossil fuel advocacy and climate denialism.
I don't even really have anything insightful to say about either of those things other than that they scare me in a way that has never left me. ⁓ you know, even leaving the country, I still find it scary. I have so many friends and family in Australia that it just it terrifies me quite a lot. and one thing in particular that I really I really am sensitive to is when an organization or a person starts to
mimic the language of one nation in a way of of kind of taking this lesson of like, well, their rise in popularity means they're doing something right. So we kind of have to
their style or their language or their positions. and I think that's exactly the wrong I know people have different views about this, but ⁓ I I think that's exactly the wrong lesson to take. I think that you need to go to the heart of why people are pissed and then actually propose a real solution instead of the fake solution. One nation are
Basically capitalizing on that outrage
the goal of making the cause of that outrage worse. And the fact that the world's fossil fuel crisis is caused directly by Donald Trump, the ideological partner of Pauline Hanson and that hasn't affected Hanson's popularity in Australia,
is really shocking and interesting to me. And I and I think that maybe
her closer back to
Capitalism and the sort of dirty money of the fossil fuel. You know, there are lots of really great influences and accounts I follow who are doing this so well. They talk about her gross little private jet. They talk about Gina Rinehart And I think this is really important. I think that's exactly the right approach to be taking. Attack her. she has a bad position and she's misleading people. I think it's good to be on the offensive
Nelli (35:46)
Ketan Joshi, it has been an absolute joy having you on the show today. Thank you so so much for your time, and I really hope it's not the last time.
Ketan Joshi (35:55)
Thank you for having me. I will come back any time.
Nelli (35:57)
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