The market suspension is about more than cold weather and power station maintenance - it is about a disgraceful failure in Australian politics. | David Crowe | ANALYSIS auspol energymarket
Australians are witnessing a sudden collapse that has taken years of sluggish incompetence to bring the nation’s energy market to a halt.
After years of slow failure in plain sight, the Australian energy system has hit the wall. This is a moment like the collision at the end of a slow-motion crash test video when the car crumples under pressure. Anyone watching could see the jolt coming for the crash test dummies.But this is no test: Australian customers are in the passenger seats. This is a live experiment with an electricity market that is no longer up to the essential task of serving households and businesses.
The immediate issue is the inability of the national electricity market, created in 1998, to handle the pressures that have inevitably followed the absence of a settled agreement at the political level.