In his 1927 Lasker’s Manual of Chess, former dominant world champion Emanuel Lasker wrote that “Lies and hypocrisy do not last long on the chess board.” (“Nun, auf dem Schachbrett der Meister gilt Lüge und Heuchelei nicht lange.”) Not a sentiment anyone ever expressed about politics, except in an “all Cretans are liars” way. But it’s especially comic to hear Baghdad Bowen declare that a huge fire at one of Australia’s two oil refineries in the midst of a huge shock to world energy supplies is no big deal. Bowen, aka Chris Bowen, Australia’s “Climate Change and Energy Minister”, didn’t actually pose in front of the flames engulfing Viva Energy’s Geelong facility and say “What fire?” But he did babble these silly talking points: “This is not a good development when it comes to what we’re managing, but we’re managing it. This in and of itself – because Viva have told us that they’re very confident they can replace the petrol with imports – won’t lead to a change in the status of the four-point fuel plan.” Ah, the four-point fuel plan. The one where you point in all four directions rhetorically then scuttle out the back door? Or the one where you close your eyes, click your heels together three times and say “Green Energy Transition” and then just keep your eyes shut? Including to the increasingly glaring contradiction between “Climate Change Minister” and “Energy Minister”.
As noted in the previous post, this slapstick disaster comes as Australia’s hapless prime minister is scurrying about various Third World nations pleading with them not to put domestic supply first… as if he himself would heed such a plea were their circumstances reversed. And the question here isn’t just what politicians were thinking in doing so much harm to Australia’s energy self-sufficiency over so many years, but what voters were thinking believing them. Or even pretending that what they said made enough sense that one could, in principle, believe it or decline to.
Like this four-point plan. Are we seriously to believe that Australians know what it is, have it pinned to their fridge, and are adjusting their behaviour accordingly? Is it even the kind of thing one could in principle treat in this manner?
Uh, that’d be not. The “National Fuel Security Plan” does have its own web page, naturally. And it gabbles stuff like “All governments are planning ahead so we are ready to act together to support Australians through the impact of the global energy shock.” Which if you believe governments can do, it’s unclear that you should be allowed to leave your house let alone to go and vote. Though maybe to the library to get a history book.
Not that politicians are exactly breaking records for intellectual achievement either. The plan is, and we are not making it up:
“1. Plan and prepare 2. Keeping Australia moving (current settings) 3. Taking targeted action 4. Protecting critical services for all Australians”
Ludicrous and soporific. Also empty, partly as it could be touted as the plan for anything and nobody would be any wiser about what the state planned to do or how and partly since “Each stage in the Plan is flexible, not fixed.” So in the words of Gertrude Stein, there’s no there there. It’s not a plan. It’s a list of things that would be nice if they happened, not a way to make them happen. But since we know who is claiming they have done them, are doing them, and will do them, it’s not unfair to look at their record.
So let us consider, for starters, “Plan and prepare”. Without getting drawn into other matters on which one might question their foresight, from defence to aboriginal affairs to inflation, how would one evaluate Australian public authorities in this regard even in the field of energy?
Well, they don’t actually ban fracking. But it is highly restricted. The state of Western Australia, for instance, forbids it in 98% of their territory. And while we do not wish to seem rude to Western Australia, surely much of it is what would once have been called a wasteland. What exactly were they afraid might happen if someone adopted a technology that, for all the scare stories, has shown itself to be perfectly safe, to people and ecosystems, in much more crowded places? But of course this ban wasn’t introduced against the will of the public. Australians wanted energy to fall from the sky and voted for it to do so. But what politicians promise or predict and what actually happens are, adults surely ought to know, two very different things.
Like Canada, Australia has abundant energy resources. And it has long been a major exporter of LNG and the dreaded coal. But naturally it has been squeezing out coal domestically (in 2009-10 it provided 37.5% of all primary energy and by 2023-24 just 25.3%). Natural gas barely budged and oil rose slightly (from 34.6 to 40.7%) while the government dumped tons of money into renewables which went from 4.8 to 9.3. Which isn’t much to show.
Oh, and nuclear? Yeah. It went from 0.0% to 0.0%. Australia shuns it. They have lots of uranium but it’s illegal to use it lest it work, mutate into an ICBM or who knows what? Maybe spawn giant radioactive ants. Clearly they have nowhere to put nuclear waste and lack the wit to manage it. Or something.
Now if we were to get into all the loopy stuff politicians claimed they could do, and all the feeble excuses they have produced since, and all the voters who have rewarded them for it, this post would be intolerably long and bitter. But when they’re selling this kind of empty rhetoric in a crisis, and you’re buying it, even as the flames from the refinery spread, well, you’re doing it to yourselves.
As we are in Canada, to be sure.
