Sussan Ley, it’s time we took a look at your climate policy ...

Sussan Ley, as your teacher I’m duty bound to give you an honest appraisal of your work.
I’ve just read your team research assignment on Australian energy and climate policy and I’m afraid to say that unless you and your other team members pull up your socks, you will be forced to repeat 2025.
I had hoped that the appalling exam result you all received on 3 May would have been a wake-up call that led you and your fellow students to re-evaluate how you approach your studies.

Alas you seem to have learned nothing.
Yes, I appreciate that things are not easy for you. Having the likes of Sky News and The Australian newspaper constantly criticise you and feed you and your team a steady diet of misguided advice cannot be easy. But you mustn’t let this get you down because barely anyone listens to them any more.
Now on to the specifics of this appalling excuse for a research assignment.
Firstly, have you not been listening in chemistry class? Coal is predominantly made of carbon. When it is burned it combines with oxygen to form CO2. Constantly repeating that you can reduce carbon emissions and also have “energy abundance” through use of Australia’s plentiful reserves of coal is illogical. Or maybe you were listening in chemistry but have been nodding off during our philosophy classes on logic?
Also, you mustn’t listen to your fellow classmate Daniel Tehan’s assertion this doesn’t matter because of carbon capture and storage. I don’t know how many times I have to tell both you and Daniel, you cannot rely on ChatGPT to write your homework. The tool has been trained partly on fantasy story books written by fossil fuel companies and has a horrible habit of hallucinating facts. It also got your friend Ted O’Brien into trouble last year when he wrote that assignment about rolling out small modular nuclear reactors over the next few years, when they don’t actually exist.
Also I have already warned you about plagiarism.
Plagiarism is always bad, but it is far worse when it involves copying the work of someone incompetent in the subject you are being assessed on. Matt Canavan and David Littleproud have not even been taking the classes that were relevant to this assignment. So I don’t understand why you would be copying their communications subject assignment on how to engage with those that struggle with reading. I told you the intended audience for this research assignment have university degrees!

Related: Factchecking five Coalition claims about net zero, from power prices to the $9tn cost

Lastly on the topic of maths. You and your team seem to have a complete inability to distinguish between billions and trillions. You keep repeating the claim that the universities of Melbourne and Queensland and Princeton University have estimated that achieving net zero will cost $9tn. They actually costed it at $300bn. Still admittedly a lot of money, but that won’t get you out of failing maths if you keep this up.
Also, be sure you don’t copy Littleproud’s maths homework. His claim in his last assignment that renewable energy projects will occupy an area of land that will “tear up Australia’s food security” illustrates he is yet to grasp percentages. In reality, 0.03% of agricultural land would support enough renewable energy projects to replace all Australia’s consumption of fossil fuels, and in practice many of these projects would be placed in areas of poor agricultural value.
My advice to you if you want to avoid repeating 2025 is to pay far greater attention to the quality of your research sources. If you heard it from Donald Trump or Pauline Hanson or Barnaby Joyce, then it is almost certainly wrong. Instead, can I suggest that you rely far more on organisations that employ genuine scientists? The Bureau of Meteorology would be a good start. The Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and CSIRO would also be worth checking out. And for goodness sake, stop copying Canavan and Littleproud’s homework!
• Tristan Edis is director of analysis and advisory at Green Energy Markets