Australian governments are proposing to fund and build billions of dollars’ worth of new electricity generation capacity as the solution to our energy security crisis

Regardless of whether investments like Snowy 2.0 or ideas for ‘clean’ coal power stations go ahead, these supply-side solutions will require many years to build and will have no impact on security of supply next summer (2017-18).

Luckily, there are demand-side solutions that use energy more wisely, which could potentially secure hundreds of MW of supply headroom this year.

Comedian Corinne Grant, former Liberal leader John Hewson, award winning author Anna Funder, and businessman John Menadue AO join a list of 32 prominent Australians signing the open letter.

Between 29 February and 8 March 2016 The Australia Institute conducted a national opinion poll of 1412 people, through Research Now, with nationally representative samples by gender, age and state or territory. 

The poll asked “Which, if any, of the following government ministers have you heard of?” Names of politicians names were presented, in randomised order, and respondents could select as many as they had heard of, or select “none”. 

Results are presented in the pdf below, sorted by response rate.