ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A jerrycan visible from space is the centrepiece of the government's $3.2bn fuel security plan which aims to protect Australia's energy sovereignty now and into the future.
Speaking to reporters today in Sydney, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the scheme ahead of the May budget and explained how it will be the keystone to driving down fuel prices, which have put upward pressure on inflation in recent months.
"This jerrycan will hold roughly half a billion litres of fuel," he said.
"Which is 50 percent of our new target. We hope to store upwards of a billion litres of fuel, which is about 50 days of each variety. This excludes whale oil in Tasmania. There will continue to be shortages of that,"
"However, this very large jerrycan will be built at the Port of Brisbane, probably by Hutchies, and will be delivered before Christmas, hopefully. We have already purchased the fuel that will be going in it, so don't freak out about that. Any questions?"
There were many but the Prime Minister just left without asking any because what are we gonna do? Vote him out? For who? Angus? The other one?
Criticism has been sharp from Opposition leader Barnaby Joyce, from Barnaby Joyce's One Nation, who said that we need to start making oil again.
"This is typical of the Albanese Government," he said.
"They are shooting themselves in the foot then putting a Bandaid on it. We don't need more storage, we need to start making oil again so we can make our own fuel, without having to go cap-in-hand to the Mussies up north and beg them for a little fuel,"
"It's silly. We should be making it here."
The Advocate reached out to Angus Taylor for comment but he was still trying to explain Lyapunov exponents to Tim Wilson, the Shadow Treasurer, who had arrived confident, having once completed half a fine arts degree at Monash before pivoting to a Masters of Diplomacy and Trade, a qualification he felt was, broadly speaking, adjacent to mathematics. It was not going well. Taylor, whose Masters degree from Oxford represents the sharpest analytical mind on the Liberal front bench, had by this point smashed Wilson's head against the partyroom whiteboard a number of times and was visibly reconsidering his life choices. Wilson kept nodding at precisely the wrong moments, dabbing drops of blood from his brow. The serene, unhurried nod of a man who had spent seven years at the Institute of Public Affairs confidently holding forth on climate change without troubling himself with the underlying physics.
It was a fitting tableau for a crisis that submits readily to the cold logic of numbers. The Strait of Hormuz closure has stripped away 20% of global oil supply overnight, exposing Australia's razor-thin 36-day petrol reserve for what it always was. A single, effeminate variable in an unstable system. Quant tells the rest, if you are still reading, 136 million litres burned every day, emergency releases that barely cover 18 hours of consumption and a diesel supply chain so concentrated in one chokepoint that any risk modeller would blanch. Taylor knows that chaotic systems are exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions. Australia's fuel security was always a butterfly's wingbeat away from crisis. Wilson, trying not to cry in front of Andrew Hastie while wiping whiteboard marker from his forehead, wanted to know if the butterfly's freedom of speech was being adequately protected.
More to come.
