Australia has some of the best politicians money can buy. Actually, I don't know what changed hands. But read it and weep. Registration may be required though, so I've grabbed a few of the choicer lines, see below the fold.

The Federal Government and fossil-fuel industry executives discussed ways to stifle growing investment in renewable energy projects at a secret meeting earlier this year. Prime Minister John Howard called the meeting on May 6, five weeks before releasing the energy white paper on June 14. The white paper favours massive investment in research to make fossil fuels cleaner, at the expense of schemes boosting growth in renewable energy. ...the [renewable energy] scheme had worked too well. The scheme requires power companies and large consumers to source an extra 9500 gigawatt hours of electricity from renewable sources by 2010. Mr Macfarlane [the Industries and Energy minister] said "investment in renewables was running ahead of the original planning", and was generating renewable energy certificates ahead of original projections. Australia continues to refuse to ratify the Kyoto agreement, incidentally. Here is the official Australian government website. This earlier article notes that the review panel received over 5,000 submissions, most in favor of increasing the target, but the committee opted to propose only cautious amendments to the MRET law. An overview of renewable energy sources. I really really really don't quite know what to say about this. A mandatory government scheme being weakened for being too successful - a scheme designed to _reduce_ Australia's reliance on fossil fuels....