Australia is running two transitions at once: one in how we generate power, the other in who we hand it to.

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Contents

1. 1. The energy transition is a cost story, not a culture war
   2. The political transition, charitably interpreted
   3. What happens now

It sits at the service station entrance, usually lit in red, updated most days.

The petrol price board is the most read piece of data in Australia. When that number goes up and stays up, governments flounder.

Alongside it, another number is also moving.

More than four million Australian households now have rooftop solar. In May EVs accounted for 20% of new cars sold. There is a moment, now familiar to many, when you find yourself doing new maths on your neighbour’s car: not how much did they spend, but how much are they saving, and when does it pay off.

The catch is that to do those sums, you need a neighbour who could afford the upfront cost. Even at price parity with petrol vehicles, the cheapest EV in Australia still costs as much as a brand new car. A subsidised battery, discounted to around $10,000, remains out of reach for many. Government energy subsidies are real and growing, but they flow to households already comfortable enough to make the investment. For everyone else, the petrol board goes up, the power bill follows, and the government’s answer appears to be put something on your roof.

This is the political problem hiding inside the energy transition.

Households without access to subsidised electrotech – because they are renting, or in apartments, or can’t afford the upfront costs – are increasingly cross-subsidising a grid that shifts costs down the income scale while shifting savings up.

While programs like solar sharer (giving all households free electricity in the middle of the day) and the falling costs of EVs on Australian roads are rectifying this imbalance, it’s meant that the energy transition is occurring alongside a political transition.

The rising cost of living, high interest rates and tight job market, have led to One Nation receiving surging polling numbers.

Two transitions are happening at the same time in Australia. One in how the country generates power. One in who the country hands power to.

Both are stories about the cost of living.

As our grid transitions, so might our political system.

The energy transition is a cost story, not a culture war

Under prime ministers Abbott, Turnbull, and then Morrison, energy policy became a proxy for cultural identity: renewables versus fossil fuels, inner city versus the regions, people who cared about the environment versus those who cared about jobs.

The framing was both inaccurate and expensive. Inaccurate because the economics were never ideological, and expensive because it produced ten years of paralysis.

Labor inherited an ageing grid, retiring coal stations, delayed renewable projects, and stagnating investment due to policy uncertainty.

The work then got underway: the capacity investment scheme, a battery rollout, large-scale transmission investment, and the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which delivered more installations in its first six months than Australia had managed in the four years prior. The recently launched solar sharing scheme will give every household effectively free electricity in the middle of the day regardless of what is on the roof.

Australia was already the world leader in rooftop solar per capita. It is now the world leader in residential battery storage per capita, too, with more than 1 GWh of capacity per million people, double the nearest rival. The same country that blanketed its rooftops with panels is now filling its garages with batteries. The pattern is self-reinforcing.

But investment takes time to produce dividends, and voters will not be judging the plan. They will be judging the bill.

The political transition, charitably interpreted

One Nation is polling strongly. The charitable reading is that this reflects cost-of-living anxiety directed at whoever sounds most disruptive, rather than an endorsement of Hanson’s views on race and immigration.

Her numbers as preferred Prime Minister rose before stalling, which speaks to how deep the dissatisfaction with the status quo runs.

Australia is not alone. For the first time in modern history, far-right parties are simultaneously leading the polls in France, the United Kingdom and Germany.

The pattern is consistent across all of them: elevated costs, collapsed institutional trust, and votes flowing to whoever sounds most disruptive. One Nation is the Australian chapter of a global story.

Two years is an eternity in politics. Turning polling numbers into seats will not be straightforward. Hanson will need MPs and Senators, and as the Malcolm Roberts example illustrates, Hanson’s candidates tend towards colourful.

One Nation’s energy policy shows what unites them: rising energy prices and a distaste for inner-city latte drinkers and Tesla drivers (I tick both those boxes). It proposes new coal-fired power stations, protects existing coal and gas generation, scraps net zero, and invests in Australian refineries, all on a promise to cut household bills by at least 20%.

It will not.

This argument has surface appeal but a fundamental flaw. Fossil fuels are a globally traded commodity.

Their price is set by international markets, not by where the barrel was extracted. The United States now produces more oil than any country on earth. American petrol prices still moved sharply when Russia invaded Ukraine and when OPEC adjusted supply. Domestic production does not insulate you from global commodity prices, because the commodity sells at global prices regardless of its origin. Australian coal stations would generate electricity from Australian coal. They would price that electricity against whatever the global commodity market dictated that day.

The Iran conflict makes this argument in real time. Countries with large domestic fossil fuel industries have not been spared the price shock. The chokepoint is structural. The next disruption, wherever it originates, will produce the same spikes.

Renewable energy and the technology it powers allows us to treat energy as a technology, not a commodity. Once the capital is spent, the fuel is free and its price is impervious to whatever is happening in the Strait of Hormuz. That is the true energy transition: not a shift in what we burn, but an exit from the commodity market entirely.

What happens now

The two transitions share no deeper logic than this: they are happening at the same time, driven by the same fears.

The question is not whether the energy transition will deliver. It will. The real test is whether it delivers visibly enough, fast enough, for enough households to feel it before the next election.

The answer depends less on policy than on whether the case is made in the right language. Climate arguments will not reach the voters One Nation is picking up. Cost arguments will. Four million households have solar. More than one million have batteries. These people made economic decisions, not environmental ones. They are the evidence base the transition needs.

The businesses that have deployed renewable energy and watched their operating costs fall should be saying so, in dollars, publicly. The solar sharing scheme will deliver effectively free electricity during daylight hours to any household connected to the grid. That is a substantial thing. It has received limited attention. We should talk about it.

The argument against One Nation’s energy policy is already there in the evidence. The Iran conflict demonstrates in real time that domestic fossil fuel production does not insulate any economy from global price shocks. That case is clear. It needs to be made consistently and in terms of actual household bills rather than Senate estimates.

The transition is further along than most people know. Two years might be enough to close that gap. But only if someone is willing to be loud about it before it matters.

We need to be that voice.

About the Author

Ian Lieblich is a Senior Strategy Manager at sustainability strategy consultancy BWD Strategic, with over a decade of climate and energy policy experience.