Courier Mail – Energy solution is right here in our own rich country

Every day about 80 freight ships arrive in Australia from overseas. By weight, about half carry petrol, diesel and other fuels. Because of the Iran war we are getting a hard lesson on how vulnerable we are to this dependency. As hard as coming months are likely to be, it could be worse. A Pacific conflict would put us in much more of a pickle. This week the Page Research Centre, aligned with the Nationals, released a report that in its title highlights the issue: All at Sea: fuel, war, and Australia’s achilles’ heel. Our main problem is that a potential adversary can cut our sea lanes and smoke us out. This strategy could work almost independent of the size of our oil stockpiles. While much of the debate has focused on why we don’t have three months’ worth of fuel, many sieges have lasted longer. Stockpiles give us breathing space, but they are not long-term protection. Speaking of which, Australia should never face an energy crisis again. We have more energy resources per person than any pp y country except Saudi Arabia. However, 95 per cent of our energy is in coal and uranium, the two energy sources that the current Labor government refuses to use. Our incoming energy crisis is a choice, not a destiny. It is a choice imposed on us by a net zero-obsessed government that has put unachievable global emissions targets above our national security. Our enormous coal reserves can be converted into oil. Coal to liquid technologies have been used at scale since World War II. South Africa produces 40 per cent of its liquid fuels from coal reserves. China converts 400 million tonnes of coal to liquids every year. According to the Page Report we could get such technologies going in about a year. This crisis may end before that, but this experience should be a massive wake-up call, because the next crisis might be much tougher for us. Change is coming. This week even the net zero-obsessed Labor government was forced to rush emergency legislation to subsidise the f l dd l importation of petrol and diesel to Australia. So, the Labor government, which has fought a war on fossil fuels for its first four years, has been reduced to desperately using taxpayer funds to support the overseas production of the same fossil fuels they claim we no longer need. The Labor government refused our amendments, which would have unwound restrictions on production of oil and gas in Australia that Labor has inserted into federal law. So we have the bizarre spectacle of an Australian government supporting the creation of foreign oil and gas jobs in overseas countries, but the Australian government won’t support the creation of Australian oil and gas jobs in its own country. If it is a good thing to import fossil fuels from overseas, it is surely a good thing to produce fossil fuels here.