Every time Chris Bowen ducks out of an aeroplane to say, ‘Don’t panic!’ Australians are left with the distinct feeling they should probably start panicking.
A few days ago, the Climate Change and Energy Minister thought it would be a good idea to take time off from a critical fuel crisis to attend a Brisbane climate conference where he repeated his tired old line about reducing fossil fuels.
The same fossil fuels his ministerial portfolio is meant to be securing after appointing a former Climate Change Tsar to the role…
Shadow Minister for Defence, James Paterson, accused Bowen of already having ‘one foot out the door’ with his role jointly heading up the next COP conference. That might be true, but Bowen’s future career prospects are the least of our worries.
There is a genuine suspicion that no one in government is mentally equipped to handle the fuel crisis.
Most people elected to Canberra are either life-long staffers, unionists, bored rich kids, or lawyers. They are blessed in the skills required to win votes and woefully lacking in real-world problem solving.
Think about it for a minute.
Australia has embarked on a $368 billion Aukus agreement with the US.
This is the same US that decided to jointly strike Iran and spark the current fuel crisis without first warning its long-term allies.
Yes, Australia chose to carry the risk of fuel insecurity, but our nation is about to grind to a halt directly because of US military action.
The US has available surplus refined fuel that it could immediately export to Australia. Already, some fuel companies have done the smart thing ordered the largest volume of fuel from the US in 30 years, but it will take about a month to get here.
Anthony Albanese must pick up the phone to Donald Trump and organise a robust, fuel supply guarantee immediately to protect Australia from economic and structural collapse.
It does not matter that the Albanese government has offended the Trump Administration on several occasions. Labor can easily make the pitch that for Australia to hold-up critical Western influence in the Pacific underneath the US’s most dangerous geopolitical threat of China, we require iron-clad fuel security.
The US needs Australia to remain independent of China and militarily functional and they have their own resources stationed in our country which require fuel.
This should be an easy deal to make.
Trump likes deals that make him look like a peacemaker.
Instead, what do we have?
Utter chaos and incoherency destroying public confidence and the economic fabric of the country.
It’s like Covid but without a narrative. In the last week we’ve gone from ‘don’t panic’ to empty fuel pumps, threats of a $40 limit (which is rumoured to come from a 2019 emergency response report when fuel was $1.48 instead of $2.96), whispers of mandatory work-from-home orders, a doubling of industry fines, mutterings about lowering the speed limit by 10km/h, and a push for EVs.
This is a government crossing its fingers and hoping the problem sorts itself out.
That is not how war works. Anything could happen, including China deciding now is the time to reunify Taiwan which will utterly trash any delusions Bowen has about turning Australia into a renewable energy superpower.
It is important to point out which countries have cancelled their shipments to Australia: Singapore, South Korea, and Malaysia. Meanwhile China, our supposed best friend that the Prime Minister likes to shake hands with a lot, could save us but has chosen instead to ban pretty much all oil exports.
For decades, successive governments have been warned about a dangerous fuel insecurity based on easily compromised supply chains. Even the official reports lacked the imagination to envision war-era disruptions. The devout belief that ‘everything will be fine forever’ remains at odds with politicians who spend their careers crying about the climate apocalypse.
We have to ask, quite seriously, if all this crisis and apocalypse mongering was nothing more than a theatre performance put on to win votes and justify the application of billions of dollars in public money to green industries that have left our nation vulnerable.
Fake apocalypses are solved with taxes, public funding, carbon credits, and virtue.
The fuel crisis requires strategy, infrastructure, and international negotiation.
Why, for example, didn’t the government put in plans and infrastructure to use our domestic shale oil in times of emergency? Sure, it costs money, but so do all things of value. There is nothing more valuable than domestic security. We have 403 billion barrels of shale oil in the ground and nothing in the pumps. Why? Our problems are almost entirely self-inflicted Net Zero regulations, environmental lobbying, and Indigenous obstruction to critical services. This has got to stop.
One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson is calling for Chris Bowen to ‘enact a National Fuel Emergency’ using the Liquid Fuel Emergency Act which would allow the government to start enacting Bowen’s half-baked thought bubbles.
If we start down this path without a sunset solution in the form of a US deal, we could be in big trouble.
Government intervention has a habit of causing massive unintended financial repercussions in a complex economic environment. Australia is in no position to weather that storm.
This country has never declared a fuel emergency, not even in global war.
Australians now have absolute proof that the Labor-Coalition rule of the last 50 years have been the most incompetent in our history.
If we leave this up to the government, our country is in huge trouble.
