Latest news with #Gadigal
SBS Australia
2 days ago
- General
- SBS Australia
'A call to remember': First Nations Veterans honoured at ceremony in Sydney
A warning this story contains the name of a First Nations person who has died. At the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park – a ceremony to remember First Nations veterans. Welcoming those in attendance, is Gadigal Elder, Allan Madden. 'Once again, on behalf of the land council and of the Gadigal mob, welcome, welcome, welcome.' A welcome dance is followed by a guard of honour, a smoking ceremony, and an opening prayer. The Ode, accompanied by a digeridoo. The service shining a light on veterans' stories. Squadron Leader Coen Henry, is a Royal Australian Air Force and Barkindji/Wiradjuri Man. 'The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who served in the First and Second World Wars varies greatly. As ethnicity was not noted on enlistment documents an accurate figure will never be known, it has been suggested that more than 3,500 Indigenous people served in these conflicts.' This year's key address was from Lieutenant Colonel Joseph West, an Australian Army and Murrawari Man, whose ancestors died in Kokoda. He joined the military when he was 18. Lieutenant West reflects on the meaning of 'lest we forget'. 'It is more than recalling names and dates, it is a call to remember truthfully, completely and with respect. But in the past we failed this promise with Indigenous soldiers." The heritage of many First Nations service personnel was previously not even recorded. "People from non-European descent were not permitted to join the defence force, in accordance of the Defence Act of 1903. This meant that even though Indigenous soldiers volunteered and fought, they did so without formal recognition." The story of Lieutenants West's great-Uncle, Private Harold West was also told in the 1942 poem 'The Coloured Digger', by H E 'Bert' Beros. Lieutenant Commander Robert Valler is with the Royal Australian Navy. At the service, he read an excerpt from The Coloured Digger. "He'd heard us talk Democracy – They preach it to his face – Yet knows that in our Federal House there's no one of his race. One day he'll leave the Army, Then join the League he shall, And he hopes we'll give a better deal to the Aboriginal." The service was also an opportunity to educate younger Australians about the contributions of First Nations veterans in Defence. Hundreds of school students lined the Pool of Remembrance in front of the Anzac Memorial, and at the end of the service laid wreaths. Attendees of all ages engaged in the event, including multiple local school groups; invited to listen, commemorate, combine tradition, and help right historical wrongs.
ABC News
3 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Could AI be the 'person' deciding whether or not you get your dream job?
Have you ever been in a job interview and thought, 'this meeting could have been an interaction with an AI agent'? No? Well, two-thirds of Australian employers are now using artificial intelligence agents to conduct job interviews on their behalf. What kind of bias does a computer have when deciding on the right candidate? And could it be less objective than a human? Also, people are hacking their digital driver's licences and Grindr is once again in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Plus, why did the CIA secretly run a Star Wars fansite in the 2010s? GUESTS: Ariel Bogle , investigations reporter for Guardian Australia , investigations reporter for Guardian Australia Gianfranco di Giovanni, games and technology journalist for ABC Entertainment This episode of Download This Show was made on Gadigal land Technical production by Craig Tilmouth and Tim Symonds
ABC News
6 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Trump's white 'genocide' claims explained
Sam Hawley: Donald Trump is beginning to make a habit of it, confronting world leaders while the cameras are rolling in the Oval Office. His latest victim, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was ambushed with Trump's claims that white farmers are being persecuted in his country. Today, Nancy Jacobs, a professor of history at Brown University, on why Trump is so keen to spread false assertions of genocide, and why white South Africans are going to the US as refugees. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam Hawley: Nancy, they say that having a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office is like going into a lion's den right now. The Ukrainian leader has learnt that. Donald Trump, US President: Your country is in big trouble. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian President: Can I answer? Donald Trump, US President: You've done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble. Sam Hawley: And now so has the South African president, hasn't he? Nancy Jacobs: Yeah, he has. Donald Trump, US President: It's a great honour to be with the president of South Africa, President Ramaphosa. And he is a man who is certainly in some circles really respected, other circles a little bit less respected, like all of us in all fairness. Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: We all like that. Nancy Jacobs: He did much better than Zelenskyy, though. I think Cyril Ramaphosa really pulled it off as well as he could have. South Africans can be proud of that. And he can be proud too. Sam Hawley: Yeah, it was a very difficult moment for him, that's for sure. Well, the meeting, of course, it started well enough, but then the lights were dimmed. Donald Trump, US President: Excuse me, turn the lights down. Turn the lights down. Sam Hawley: And tell me what unfolded. Nancy Jacobs: Well, Trump said some things before then. And in typical Trump fashion, he was really unspecific. And he said, they say there's a lot of bad things going on in Africa. Donald Trump, US President:: A lot of people are very concerned with regard to South Africa. And that's really the purpose of the meeting. And we'll see how that turns out. But we have many people that feel they're being persecuted and they're coming to the United States. So we take from many, many locations if we feel there's persecution or genocide going on. Nancy Jacobs: And then he showed this video. And the video had fake news. But at the same time, Trump was narrating it that made it even more false. Donald Trump, US President: These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. Over a thousand of white farmers. Nancy Jacobs: And he was slandering South Africa and not allowing President Ramaphosa any kind of a decent opportunity to respond to him. Donald Trump, US President: You do allow them to take land. Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: No, no, no, no. Donald Trump, US President: You do allow them to take land. Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: Nobody can take the land. Donald Trump, US President: When they take the land, they kill the white farmer. And when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them. Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: No, there is quite... Nancy Jacobs: And Ramaphosa was brilliant and always talking about the great Nelson Mandela and that country's success in peacemaking. Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: You know, we were we were lucky because we had the great Nelson Mandela, who taught us how to create peace, to make peace. Nancy Jacobs: I think the South Africans played it really well. Sam Hawley: Mm. Well, during the meeting, Trump also held up a series of articles he claimed showed evidence of white farmer killings. And he suggested to President Ramaphosa that Australia was being inundated by white Africans fleeing persecution. Donald Trump, US President: And you take a look at Australia, they're being inundated and we're being inundated with people that want to get out. Sam Hawley: Tell me about that. Nancy Jacobs: I think Trump was a little bit conflicted. At one point, he said there were just a few Australians and then he said it was inundated. Donald Trump doesn't necessarily have a good read on what's going on in other parts of the world or even the United States, for that matter. But I want to say that, you know, Australia is as a part of this history. Back in 2018, it was Peter Dutton. Was that who it was? Sam Hawley: He was a former home affairs minister at the time, and he'd made some comments on 2GB. Nancy Jacobs: I remember that. And I remember he was talking about how white South Africans, particularly farmers, were so oppressed and that South Africa should have some sort of a fast track on visas to allow them into the country. Peter Dutton, then-Home Affairs Minister: We have the potential to help some of these people that are being persecuted. So I've asked my department to have a look at options and ways in which we can provide some assistance, because I do think on the information that I've seen, people do need help and they need help from a civilised country like ours. Nancy Jacobs: The whole world thought this was ridiculous and awful. But the world's changed a lot since 2018, I guess, because this policy is actually happening in the United States. Sam Hawley: Before this meeting even began, tensions were really high, weren't they? Because in February, Trump had already moved to cut aid to South Africa. And while his administration had basically frozen refugee programs, it actually opened the doors to white South Africans. News report: A warm welcome for an unlikely group of refugees. News report: Nearly 60 white South Africans arrived in the US after being granted refugee status on the basis of being victims of racial discrimination. Nancy Jacobs: Donald Trump made his anti-immigration policy the centrepiece of his campaign, and it's really his signature policy in the United States now. And the people he's restricted from coming are people from Latin America and Central Africa. And I think this is very much related to his whole anti-diversity, equity and inclusion rant. He's been criticising DEI moves in the United States, and he seems to have the idea of stripping any hint of DEI out of our policy for refugees. And on the other hand, Donald Trump has always been in favour of having immigration from Europe and have more white immigrants. And this idea has been circulating for a while that white South Africans are being persecuted in South Africa, if not victims of genocide. And he's come up with the idea of allowing them to come and really fast track these people from South Africa on these spurious claims of genocide. Sam Hawley: But the data doesn't back up any of these claims. The claim of genocide is just not true. Nancy Jacobs: No, it's ridiculous. So South Africa is a really violent country. They've got a real problem with crime and they've got a problem with murder. And some of these crimes are in rural areas. And there have been crimes against white farmers, murder, home invasions and murders. Now, they reached a peak in the late 1990s and early noughts, but they've diminished since then. Since 2020, there have been 247 murders in the countryside in rural areas. And that's too many, right? But it's not established that this crime, these 247 murders are actually racialised, that white people are disproportionately targeted. In fact, those 247 murders in the countryside over the last five years were people of all races. And so last week, for the first time, the South African police gave a breakdown by race. They didn't usually keep those statistics. And they said over the past six months, 18 people were killed in the countryside and two of those were white. There is violence in the countryside. Everyone admits that. The violence does not seem to disproportionately affect white people. Genocide has a really specific meaning. It's the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group. And that is not happening in South Africa today. Sam Hawley: Mm. All right. Well, Nancy, I want to unpack with you now why it is that Donald Trump has taken the plight of white South Africans up as a priority. He has been going on about this for a while, hasn't he? Since at least 2018. Nancy Jacobs: Right. 2018. And I think as far as I remember, I first heard the idea circulating when it came out of Australia from Peter Dutton. But it was circulating, I think, in white Christian nationalist circles and in international circles of of white nationalists. And some Americans who had Donald Trump's ear were talking about it. Ann Coulter, a very conservative columnist, and also Tucker Carlson, who was at Fox News at the time. Tucker Carlson, former Fox News host: Let's be clear about what's happening. This is racist violence as brutal and horrifying and indefensible as anything that happened under apartheid. The difference is at this time, the Western media are cheering it on. Nancy Jacobs: Tucker Carlson did a report on farm killings and the plight of white South Africans. And Donald Trump tweeted about that in 2018. And that's the first time that Donald Trump seems to have noticed it. It seems he watched Tucker Carlson on TV and then was convinced it was a problem. You know, Trump one. His first administration was really different than Trump two. And things are really different in 2025. And there are more reasons for him to be concerned with white South Africans and to promote white South Africans coming to the United States. First, his whole concern about immigration from Latin America and Africa, his whole anti-DEI bent. And also, he's got Elon Musk, who is really representing a particular idea about white disadvantage in South Africa. And beyond that, Trump's constituency are white Christian nationalists in this country. Apartheid was a Christian nationalist ideology. And Christian nationalism is on the rise in the United States today. So his constituency is very aware of South Africa and that this Christian nationalist policy was abolished. And they're very aware of the white people whom they consider to be so disadvantaged. And by talking about the disadvantage of Afrikaners, I think Trump's playing a dog whistle to his supporters. And they hear that and they understand that he's supporting their Christian nationalist language. Sam Hawley: Mm, interesting. And what about Elon Musk? He is, of course, South African himself. How big a role is he playing in all of this? Nancy Jacobs: Oh, I think huge. He has very strong feelings about what sort of people should be populating the United States in particular. I don't know what his investment is in South Africa now, but he thinks there should be more white people in the United States. And opening up the country to white immigrants from South Africa is something that he's certainly behind. I want to say there's one other thing going on that might be influencing Trump. And that has to do with Israel. Because, you know, South Africa brought the case to the International Court of Justice last year accusing Israel of genocide. And Trump, of course, is very associated with supporting Israel. And also his Christian nationalist base are very pro-Zionist. So right-wing evangelicals in the United States are very pro-Israel. So by supporting Christian South Africans who've been victims of the South African government, the same South African government that has accused Israel of genocide, and by accusing the South Africans of genocide, Trump's really turning the whole discourse of genocide on its head in ways that I think are really quite delighting his base. Sam Hawley: All right. Nancy, as you said, South Africa does have one of the highest murder rates in the world, and crime is a massive problem. But what are the consequences in your mind of Donald Trump spreading these false claims of genocide? Nancy Jacobs: I think, you know, there are certain South Africans who will take advantage of it. And there are some South Africans who are going to leave the country. They're economic migrants. That's the first thing I'm going to say. Economic migrants are going to take opportunity of the possibility of leaving a country which has real economic hardship now and a lot of crime. And there are a lot of black South Africans who would like to leave South Africa too, but the opportunity is only there for white South Africans. And those who can go will go. And right now, economic migrants are being recognised as refugees by the U.S. government. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the ramifications will be in South Africa. I don't think what's happening in U.S. relations with South Africa right now have a lot to do with South Africa. I mean, it's conditions in the U.S. that have prompted this. I see this as much more portentous as a problem for the United States than for South Africa right now. Sam Hawley: Nancy Jacobs is a professor of history at Brown University and has studied South Africa for 40 years. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead and Sam Dunn. Audio production by Adair Sheppard. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
ABC News
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Why is Charli XCX following this South Australian artist?
Your spine is about to be tingled by the metalic, 'Pacifica Fantasy' of an artist Charli XCX has on her radar. You'll also here Aubany's sophomore single that unravels like a ball of yarn and Hektor's debut EP is THAT good that we had to do a deep cut. Hear the top 5 songs of the week in Australian music with the Unearthed Podcast. Track List: Hektor – Assembly Hektor – Assembly Jess Reiss- Like This Jess Reiss- Like This Lonelyspeck- Wishing Lonelyspeck- Wishing Starshower - [Ft. aayu/Forum/rainmail/lil ket/kk88] Starshower - [Ft. aayu/Forum/rainmail/lil ket/kk88] Aubany- Hallow Presenter : Sara Glaidous Produced by: Sara Glaidous The Unearthed Podcast is an ABC podcast, produced by triple j. It is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.
ABC News
25-05-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Why energy giants want to control solar batteries
Sam Hawley: It was a decision driven by spite for Sydney man Peter Anderson. He was determined to buy a solar battery for his home so he could take money away from the big power companies while never receiving a hefty power bill again. But his plan came unstuck after agreeing to participate in a so-called virtual power plant. Today, energy reporter Dan Mercer on Peter's dilemma, how giving back to the grid really works and whether it's worth it. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Dan, we're going to explain what a virtual power plant is, and it sounds pretty high tech. Dan Mercer: It does, Sam, but it's actually not. A virtual power plant is a real power plant in many ways. It's just made up of hundreds or thousands of individual households. I mean, if your house has solar panels, it's a power plant. And if you add in batteries, a household has the ability to sell power even when the sun goes down. Virtual power plants are really about coordinating all of this diffused capacity. The theory is that if you can coordinate or aggregate, as it's known, enough of them, then the combined capacity can be very significant indeed. Critically, though, they involve householders signing up to become part of a VPP and giving up some control over their batteries and their solar panels in the process. And they can use that to prop up the market when it's under stress. And the market is under stress more and more as we get deeper into this transition. The quid pro quo is that the householder is supposed to be better off overall. As we're going to hear, there's a sticking point, though, because you might want all of your stored power at the same time as the grid needs it. Sam Hawley: OK. So you've been speaking with Sydney resident Peter Anderson. Now he signed up his house to be part of a virtual power plant. And that is a completely optional decision, right? He didn't have to. He agreed to. Dan Mercer: Yeah, Peter was like millions of Australians in that he already had solar panels on his roof, but he was keen on getting a battery so he could store some of the excess power those panels were generating. And it was the lure of a deal that got him to buy one in the end. In his case, it was from one of the biggest energy retailers in Australia, AGL. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: It was a very gentle kind of, hey, this is what it is. We promise we won't do these things. We promise we will do these things. We knock a thousand bucks off the battery. We put you on a five year deal to stay on the program for five years. And if you don't, we pro-rate that thousand dollars and ask for that back, which all seemed very reasonable. Dan Mercer: In exchange, Mr. Anderson says he agreed to participate in a VPP that was being run by AGL. Funnily enough, he says he didn't really need a battery. He just wanted to stop paying power bills. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: Our solar installer, when I first spoke to her, she's like, oh, you don't need a battery. I said, it's not about needing a battery, Lily. It's about spite, taking money away from the power companies. Sam Hawley: Don't we all want to stop paying power bills? All right. Dan Mercer: It's the dream. Sam Hawley: It is. It is. So for a while for Mr. Anderson, it was fantastic. He got this thousand dollars off a battery and he didn't notice anything for ages. Dan Mercer: Yeah, that's right, Sam. Peter told me that in the first year after joining the scheme and getting the battery, he barely noticed a thing. Given that he thought it was a great deal, money for pretty much nothing. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: You know, we'd been on that for a few quarters and the best they got out of us was like 22 cents. So we were pretty smart. Sam Hawley: Yeah, and that sounds good, too. But things then started to go not quite as he had hoped for. And he accused AGL of pretty much draining his battery until it was almost empty. Dan Mercer: Yeah. So after about a year, Mr. Anderson reckons he started noticing some fairly dramatic shifts. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: It was just little bits and bobs and they weren't pulling huge chunks of it. And then one sort of wet Thursday night, they just drained the battery. But completely drained it down to 5 percent. And we thought, oh, OK, that's new. Dan Mercer: Was that a one off or? Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: No, because they did it again the next day. So they charged it and then drained it. Dan Mercer: Worse, he says the depletion of his battery forced him to buy power from the grid at just the wrong time. The evening peak when prices are highest. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: They changed the way they use the battery from these little bites every now and again to just dragging everything out of it. And you could map when they were doing that to when the price skyrocketed. Dan Mercer: And he says it meant he couldn't run his house of his own battery just when he needed it. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: This is an obvious misuse of the virtual power plant solution where they're draining the battery to service other clients and you're left in the lurch. Dan Mercer: There's a side note to this, too, Sam. Peter reckons AGL placed him without proper warning on a type of complicated, dynamic charge called a demand tariff. Under a demand tariff, consumers are charged according to their single greatest half hourly period of electricity use from the grid across an entire month. They're supposed to discourage people from using lots of power in the peak. But a lot of people hate them. AGL insists it gave Peter adequate notification and it says the two matters are completely separate. Peter says the changes amounted to a double whammy because he was not only having to pay peak prices, he was getting hit by the demand tariff as well. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: They were basically forcing us to power our house from the grid and trapping us into using the demand tariff. Dan Mercer: Peter told me it was such an unsatisfactory experience that he actually left the VPP scheme shortly after all of this went down. He says he'll manage his own energy needs from now on. Sam Hawley: OK, so what has AGL had to say about all of this? Dan Mercer: Well, first of all, AGL disputes any suggestion it drained Peter's battery. A spokeswoman told me the company's policy was to leave at least a fifth of the charge remaining. And as mentioned, on a demand tariff, AGL has very much disputed Mr. Anderson's version of events. But on top of this, AGL says it's the poles and wires companies and not the retailers like AGL that instigate these tariffs in the first place. I should say, Sam, I don't think AGL is applying demand tariffs any longer. There's been such a backlash that I think they've actually walked away from them. Network poles and wires companies, for their part, they say it's completely up to the retailer to decide how to charge households. And it always has been that way. Sam Hawley: But tell me, Dan, would Peter have been better off if he just didn't sign up to this in the first place? How would it have worked if he didn't do it? Dan Mercer: It's hard to know, to be honest. He got a thousand dollars off the upfront cost of his battery, which isn't nothing. He pulled out of the VPP scheme before the costs of AGL's alleged actions were able to add up to much. But I think it raises very interesting questions about how much value there is in household storage and who should capture it. Sam Hawley: All right. Well, Dan, governments and energy companies are really working on storing renewable energy at a very large scale. So just tell me how significant could homeowners like Peter be to that? Dan Mercer: Right now, it's not a lot, but I don't think there are many people out there, in the energy industry at least, who doubt that it'll be big. Just take a look at the number of households with solar. About one in three has an installation. Now, fewer than one in 10 of those has a battery. But that will change because the cost of batteries is going to come down. Governments will throw more money at them in the form of subsidies. And the technology will mature. The Australian energy market operator expects VPPs to become a big part of the energy mix over the coming decade. Gabriel Kuiper is an expert in this space. She reckons the number of households that are part of VPPs could eventually number in the millions. Gabrielle Kuiper, renewable energy consultant: Once we have a lot of batteries and also a lot of electric vehicles with the capacity to feed back into people's homes or the grid, we will see this become a really significant part of the electricity system. Sam Hawley: And I guess the regulators, they really don't want virtual power plants to get a bad rap. They need them, right? They need people to trust that it's great and they want to opt in. Dan Mercer: Absolutely. That's fundamentally a part of this. And I think it's totally fair to say that there's this nagging concern about the risks of VPPs being rejected by the public, particularly if there are more stories like Peter's. If VPPs are going to work, Gabriel Kuiper says consumers have to be able to trust them. She reckons there's too little information that can help the average householder navigate and make sense of the market. And she's worried consumers could end up missing out on many of the benefits of their own investments, which can be substantial. Gabrielle Kuiper, renewable energy consultant: The risk is that the aggregators earn a very high proportion of the profits from household and businesses' energy technologies, particularly batteries, and households and businesses don't end up with good value from participating in those VPPs. Dan Mercer: It goes to a fundamental point, I think, which is that householders are going to want to be properly rewarded if their gear is going to be used to help the grid. Sam Hawley: All right, well, Dan, of course, Labor had a resounding win at the federal election and they're promising to give big subsidies to people to buy home batteries. So I gather that is going to see a lot more of these installed and probably pretty quickly. Dan Mercer: That's certainly the expectation. And judging by the news that's out there, since Labor made the announcement, the installers have fully booked. Sam, we've already got a lot of solar in Australia, as mentioned, but AEMO is forecasting the number of installations to double again by 2050. It expects the increase in battery numbers to be far more dramatic. It thinks the number of battery systems in Australia's two biggest grids will soar from about 270,000 battery systems now to 5.6 million by 2050. So quite an extraordinary growth. In the election campaign, Anthony Albanese pledged $2.3 billion for home battery subsidies. It'll apply to people with existing solar as well as those wanting to invest in new solar battery combinations. It won't be means tested and it'll give about 30 percent off the cost of getting one of these things. Some of the most popular batteries currently on sale in Australia from the likes of BYD, a Chinese company, and Tesla, the big American firm, they cost roughly $12,000 to $14,000 installed. That's before subsidies. Sam Hawley: Yeah, so they're still pretty expensive, but there will be a lot more homes with solar and batteries. So if virtual power plants are really important to keeping the grid stable, I guess the question is, will it stay opt in or will regulators and the government be quite tempted to force people with batteries to send their power back to the grid when it's needed? Dan Mercer: It's a great question, Sam. And to be honest, I'm not sure that it's one which has a clear answer yet. Interestingly, one of the caveats that Labor has put on its battery subsidy scheme, and which other states have also done, is that in order for the battery to be eligible, it has to be what they call VPP ready. It means the battery can technically be integrated with a VPP scheme. In reality, there are some battery manufacturers that don't particularly like or want their products being ultimately controlled by any party other than themselves, by extension, I suppose, the householder that bought them. Tesla is the prime example here. What's pretty clear though, is that there's a pressing need to better orchestrate all of the household clean tech that's out there. Lots and lots of small scale systems can add up to very big challenges for an energy system. Equally, they are huge opportunities as well. Sam Hawley: All right. Well, Dan, you must hear from customers all the time with concerns. So what's your advice to people considering installing a battery and then potentially signing up to a virtual power plant? Dan Mercer: Like in any deal you might enter, always read the fine print.I think the more engaged energy consumers, they're going to be fine. The big challenge will be ensuring VPPs can serve the mainstream where most of us are. There's no doubt that rooftop solar combined with batteries and other clean tech can provide immense value to the grid. It can smooth out the troughs when there's too much supply and not enough demand and vice versa with the peaks. But of course, energy companies know this. And let's be honest, many of them want to capture that value themselves. So what I'm going to be most interested in is whether governments and regulators and the industry itself can get ahead of it to make sure punters get their fair share of the value. And VPPs provide the broadest possible benefit. So if this doesn't happen, VPPs, I think, will struggle to work. Most people will do their own thing and we'll all end up paying more than we should. Sam Hawley: Dan Mercer is the ABC's energy reporter. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead and Sam Dunn. Audio production by Adair Sheppard. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
