Mr Albanese is announcing a new protectionism with the government driving a ‘new competition’ approach centred on a Net Zero energy policy. It is to combine ‘market tools, with government action’ with the economy no longer ‘being left to market forces or trusted to the invisible hand’. This is billed as a step change but it is more like a continuation of regulatory and direct subsidy measures accumulated in a 20-year government-propelled ‘transition’ of the economy from coal to wind and solar. 

Starting small with John Howard’s ‘Mandatory Renewable Energy Target’, by 2016 subsidies to wind and solar had risen to $4.9...