The current federal government in Australia could be commended for its response to COVID19 – a rare example of adhering to the scientific consensus and keeping the virus relatively contained in Australia with the help of all the states and territories of differing political persuasions. It demonstrates the rapid progress that can be made when science and common sense replaces politics. It seems now however that it’s back to fossil fueled business as usual for this current anachronistic government. Are they so blindly stupid or simply terminally corrupted by the fossil fuel lobby? It’s staggering that having witnessed and endured the 2019 unprecedented bush fires and seeing them replicated in the United States our ‘leaders’ response is to inject more subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.

Angus Taylor Scott Morisson
It was in early 2013 that Air Vice Marshall John Blackburn (retired) put out the review commissioned by the NRMA called “Australia’s Liquid Fuel Security – Part 1” (we put a dedicated page to Energy Security on the MEC website in February 2015). It highlighted the vulnerability of Australia to respond to a threat to supply caused through War, an Economic Collapse and/or Environmental Disaster. Every federal politician including those currently in power was provided with copies. Of course the Air Vice Marshall’s warnings were totally ignored. Now with a pending war with China, an economic collapse resulting from massive debt and corporate greed plus the environmental disaster of climate change edging ever closer, those in power have decided that our insurance will be to invest in more oil, gas and coal. It’s reprehensible and outrageous that in the face of such major challenges this Liberal National Coalition have the vision of a myopic learner driver trying to navigate a freeway by only looking in the rear view mirror. Really – is it simply stupidity or is it bribery and corruption?

It’s fine to get additional oil supplies to help insure against catastrophe but that is not enough by itself. There must be vision of the future and we all know that the future is not coal, oil and gas. The Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, is proposing more fossil fuel reserves. A bit late Angus but better late than never! But this is the same man who jollied up to Alan Jones and poured scorn on electric vehicles during the last election. I listened to the radio broadcast with dismay and incredulity that a minister of the crown was so ridiculously uninformed and ignorant. Mr Taylor, the future security of the Australian transport fleet is based on electricity and electric vehicles – NOT fu*ki#g oil. Yet there is not a peep from the minister in this regard – no vision, no idea of what’s happening globally in the automotive sector, another clueless hack. So is it Stupidity or is it Corruption? How many more ‘unprecedented’ events do we need before these blockheads in Canberra wake up or divest themselves from the fossil fuel bribery of ‘political donations’ and the insidious manipulation of Rupert Murdoch.