The call for energy agnosticism is right, but the gap between aspiration and execution is enormous. Across critical minerals and gas in WA and Queensland, average permitting timelines for major projects have blown out to 7-10 years once you layer in environmental offsets, native title, and overlapping state and federal approvals. The Gulf states didn't just decide to capture value across the energy chain. They built regulatory frameworks that enabled development at pace. What's the equivalent institutional reform agenda here? The system that's meant to enable energy independence is the same one that's been optimised for decades to manage orderly decline, not rapid build-out. Where does the political will come from to re-engineer approvals when every level of government has a veto?
Worse than that, the Government funds opposition groups like the Environmental Defenders Office to further frustrate the process. They have zero interest and zero clue in how energy security is connected to food, economic, and national security. Question is, how bad does it have to get before things change?
Yes, and the Queensland Premier requests the Federal Government speed up approvals for the Taroom Trough (potentially 250m barrels of oil in western Queensland) exploration and development. And the Federal Energy Minister, Bonehead Bowen pours cold water on it.
While I agree (as usual) with Chris’ conclusions and advice about the correct response to this latest crisis vis a vis Energy strategy, I disagree with his characterisation of the Iran war writ large. I’m happy to cut him some slack given he doesn’t claim to be an expert on geopolitics or war strategy, but the fact that China wasn’t even mentioned in this article is a major clue to its shortcomings on this topic. Nuff said…
China and US efforts to curtail her access to energy is a whole different essay?
Chris is talking about a global shift toward energy independence/abundance and our reliance on the US to maintain ( prior to Iran war ) global rules based order.
Australia needs to selfishly commit to her own energy independence regardless of China’s influence.
I appreciate the complex topic of the PRC’s geopolitical and economic global entanglement is worthy of many dedicated essays in their own right, however, that’s not sufficient reason to completely leave it out of the narrative of the Iran war and to parrot the MSM TDS script when characterising the rationale, timing and method of the US-Israel attack on the IRGC terrorist state. That’s my singular critique of Chris’ essay. There’s plenty of intelligent nuanced analysis available from well informed geopolitical strategists which make a very sound case for this effort to rid the world of the most evil regime since the Nazi’s of WW2. There’s no excuse for someone of Chris’ standing as an intelligent correspondent to ignore said perspectives.
Thank you, Chris, for another insightful and informative article. The more I contemplate this continuing evolution of national crises, the more I question our political system. It is clear that the political class - of all colours - have been complicit in the sorry state of our Nation today.
It doesn’t matter which party we look at, we will always find a majority of ‘minders’ trying to act in roles for which they have no qualifications or experience, and the predictable outcomes of dismal failure. Leadership changes, and even party changes, don’t change a thing. And they expect to be referred to as “honourable”!
Something is badly wrong with our system, and I don’t know how we can change it for the better. How can we establish a leadership - at all levels - which is fully qualified, suitably experienced and, above all, trustworthy and dependable?
That’s going to be a challenge, isn’t it!??? But it’s an excellent point, obviously. How many professionals or other eminently suitable people would want to become politicians?
We would also need to change the governance environment to establish an upstanding and distinguishing foundation, in order to attract the right candidates.
Would it be reasonable for the voting public to make the final selection, based on fully disclosed credentials, or is this expecting too much of our electorates?
There are many questions to be addressed, but your suggestion is a great start. Thank you.
Graeme – an essential step in changing things for the better to meet your proposal to install “fully qualified, suitably experienced, trustworthy and dependable leaders” will have to be the execution of a thorough clean out of the bloated, self-serving bureaucracies of the various public service bodies in Australia.
As just one of many examples of extreme incompetence, consider the runaway cost of the NDIS - about which it has recently come to light - does not force its contracted service providers to submit standardised, legible invoices for the services that they are allegedly providing.
Combined with this is the fact that a disproportionate number of the NDIS service recipients & service providers are tightly clustered in Green-Left held inner city areas with very high proportions of immigrants. Australians are being played for suckers.
Yes, Lapun, you are so right: We can’t have better government without also having a far better bureaucracy underpinning government and public services. The NDIS debacle is but one example, and there are so many others.
Imagine the resistance that will be encountered when attempting to take action to effect change, it will be ugly. Bold determination, well-informed thinking and slick planning will be essential. A bloodless revolution, if such is even possible?
I guess it’s easy to sit from afar and criticise the war in Iran and its consequences. We have brought those consequences in ourselves with successive governments of either stripe and their stupid policies. Who knows how it will end. Regime change was never an aim. The Iranians welcomed in the Islamic Republic. Now they are the ones to change it! Look at the mess the Americans, British and us made in the rest of the Middle East. Israel pays the price.
And yet those in authority must continue to pay lip service to the concept that the climate is significantly affected by carbon dioxide. Real objectivity can only come from an admission that this is a failed theory, not supported by reality.
Forgive me for being glass half full but in the end, Australia will adapt - we have the resources and geopolitical resources and positioning to do so, and will be forced to : however this may well take 15 years ++ of pain.
Agree President Trump is anything but stupid. I think he saw a rare opportunity to remove the rotten Iranian regime. However sometimes these things don't turn out as planned.
I don't see too many news articles criticizing Trump for removing the Venezuelan thug in Chief.
The administration is playing chess (from its perspective) within the rules but using different gambits that traditional players don’t use or value. Some moves appear to have immediate local import as well as obscure or obscured remote intermediate impact. Passivity and genuflection to the old order it is not investing in, as the us cowrote the world rules post ww1, wrote the rules post ww2, rewrote them in 197x, edited them in 2008. It is now rewriting them again from scratch. The.earth majority wanted a multipolar world and you now have it: India, China, the US and on a very good day for a couple of hours the EU. The previous rules were gamed by the entrenched, smart and forceful. Hats off to uk in reinsurance, Switzerland in secret bank accounts, the Chinese in phenomenal deceit, theft and near slavery. Etc. that is over.
We should have coal liquefaction - at least for supplying our Defence Forces. Germany did it in WW2, under Apartheid so did South Africa and China produces a significant portion of their fuel this way.
Also - irrelevant to this discussion AUKUS is a colossal waste of money and I fear Australia sailors will end up as accidental war criminals.
I believe we may already be complicit via Pine Gap, which I am sure intercepted and forwarded intelligence in the prosecution of an undeclared war and assassinations.
Trump is dismantling the uk and Europe's control of the shipping lanes via insurance. This move by Trump controls oil and lng. Also tighter controls of all shipping targeting unregistered ships
The author makes a lot of good points, but incorrectly places the blame on this one event. It’s a big world out there, and if it wasn’t this war, it would have been something else that would have shown the folly of intentionally making yourself dependent on others for necessities. A war (started somewhere else or by someone else), terrorism, sovereign debt crisis, natural disaster or name your crisis is bound to happen at some point.
Any one of these could throw Australia and other countries into the situations they are in now.
Australians are too Fn dumb to to exploit our own resources. And have been since we sold all our wool to England and bought back woollen blankets, woollen suits & woollen jumpers all manufactured in England. We import 75% of our nitrogen fertiliser made from natural gas from Qatar despite having major natural gas fields, all of which is exported. We shut down all our oil refineries except 2. We give away our coal but don't have 1 coal to liquid fuels plant built or planned. Uranium is exported to power nuclear plants all around the world and we don't have even 1. We manufacture nothing except a multicultural paradise where half of Sydney doesn't speak English. And we were the first nation to support an illegal war against Iran hours after 170 school girls were blown to bits. Our foreign military bases in Australia supply Satellite Intelligence for targeting Iranian infrastructure. We sanction Russia & join AUKUS to "contain" China, our largest trading partner. Wow... talk about the "Clever Country". And we support without question genocide, and if you say you don't support murder of children & mothers, you go to jail. What a freaking great country we have become. And, we are about to pay for it. BIG TIME.
I agree with you, Australia has enough natural resources in the country to make almost any industry possible and the sooner we become self reliant, the sooner we will become a superpower. Exporting our resources overseas to be made into steel, car batteries, fertiliser etc is long sighted stupidity. After Trump blew up the world, surely our politicians have learnt a valuable lesson, the more we produce onshore insulates us from the problems we are facing today as a result of an unjust war on Iran.
Furthermore, why should a man like Trump, a man that is need of urgent psychiatric treatment for, be allow anywhere near the button that sets off a nuclear war and Iran, who hasn’t really had an all out war in over 300 years, not be allowed enriched uranium.
My understanding is the last four Avenger Class minesweepers that had been in Behrain were decommissioned on Sept 2025 (& shipped back to the US in January 2026). I believe Joe Biden was President at the time of the official decommissioning. I’m not a fan of Joe Biden or Donald Trump (didn’t vote for either), but when you write the following, it seems rather biased & the timing of this decommissioning of these longtime effective / experienced Avenger Class minesweepers was more of a questionable judgement issue with the Pentagon’s Chief of Staff & CENTCOM in 2025;
“The presence of the minesweepers was testimony to the fact the US had understood this risk for 40 years. Donald Trump chose to ignore it.”
For what it is worth, my guess is there will be no accountability on this minesweeper issue with either the top brass generals of the Pentagon’s Chief of Staff or CENTCOM.
Great essay once again Chris.
It reminds me of the Mark Twain quote, ‘Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.’
Rephrased: ‘Two things are in ample abundance in Australia fossil fuels and human stupidity; and in the latter super-abundant!!
The call for energy agnosticism is right, but the gap between aspiration and execution is enormous. Across critical minerals and gas in WA and Queensland, average permitting timelines for major projects have blown out to 7-10 years once you layer in environmental offsets, native title, and overlapping state and federal approvals. The Gulf states didn't just decide to capture value across the energy chain. They built regulatory frameworks that enabled development at pace. What's the equivalent institutional reform agenda here? The system that's meant to enable energy independence is the same one that's been optimised for decades to manage orderly decline, not rapid build-out. Where does the political will come from to re-engineer approvals when every level of government has a veto?
Worse than that, the Government funds opposition groups like the Environmental Defenders Office to further frustrate the process. They have zero interest and zero clue in how energy security is connected to food, economic, and national security. Question is, how bad does it have to get before things change?
Both of your comments are true but they could change in a week if the crisis is big enough. Look at what the fear of Covid was able to achieve
Yes, and the Queensland Premier requests the Federal Government speed up approvals for the Taroom Trough (potentially 250m barrels of oil in western Queensland) exploration and development. And the Federal Energy Minister, Bonehead Bowen pours cold water on it.
No wonder we are in trouble.
While I agree (as usual) with Chris’ conclusions and advice about the correct response to this latest crisis vis a vis Energy strategy, I disagree with his characterisation of the Iran war writ large. I’m happy to cut him some slack given he doesn’t claim to be an expert on geopolitics or war strategy, but the fact that China wasn’t even mentioned in this article is a major clue to its shortcomings on this topic. Nuff said…
China and US efforts to curtail her access to energy is a whole different essay?
Chris is talking about a global shift toward energy independence/abundance and our reliance on the US to maintain ( prior to Iran war ) global rules based order.
Australia needs to selfishly commit to her own energy independence regardless of China’s influence.
I appreciate the complex topic of the PRC’s geopolitical and economic global entanglement is worthy of many dedicated essays in their own right, however, that’s not sufficient reason to completely leave it out of the narrative of the Iran war and to parrot the MSM TDS script when characterising the rationale, timing and method of the US-Israel attack on the IRGC terrorist state. That’s my singular critique of Chris’ essay. There’s plenty of intelligent nuanced analysis available from well informed geopolitical strategists which make a very sound case for this effort to rid the world of the most evil regime since the Nazi’s of WW2. There’s no excuse for someone of Chris’ standing as an intelligent correspondent to ignore said perspectives.
Fair enough 😊
Thank you, Chris, for another insightful and informative article. The more I contemplate this continuing evolution of national crises, the more I question our political system. It is clear that the political class - of all colours - have been complicit in the sorry state of our Nation today.
It doesn’t matter which party we look at, we will always find a majority of ‘minders’ trying to act in roles for which they have no qualifications or experience, and the predictable outcomes of dismal failure. Leadership changes, and even party changes, don’t change a thing. And they expect to be referred to as “honourable”!
Something is badly wrong with our system, and I don’t know how we can change it for the better. How can we establish a leadership - at all levels - which is fully qualified, suitably experienced and, above all, trustworthy and dependable?
Qualified politicians would be a great start. No qualifications no portfolio.
All politicians should be made to take an exam based on John Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance.
That’s going to be a challenge, isn’t it!??? But it’s an excellent point, obviously. How many professionals or other eminently suitable people would want to become politicians?
We would also need to change the governance environment to establish an upstanding and distinguishing foundation, in order to attract the right candidates.
Would it be reasonable for the voting public to make the final selection, based on fully disclosed credentials, or is this expecting too much of our electorates?
There are many questions to be addressed, but your suggestion is a great start. Thank you.
Graeme – an essential step in changing things for the better to meet your proposal to install “fully qualified, suitably experienced, trustworthy and dependable leaders” will have to be the execution of a thorough clean out of the bloated, self-serving bureaucracies of the various public service bodies in Australia.
As just one of many examples of extreme incompetence, consider the runaway cost of the NDIS - about which it has recently come to light - does not force its contracted service providers to submit standardised, legible invoices for the services that they are allegedly providing.
Combined with this is the fact that a disproportionate number of the NDIS service recipients & service providers are tightly clustered in Green-Left held inner city areas with very high proportions of immigrants. Australians are being played for suckers.
Yes, Lapun, you are so right: We can’t have better government without also having a far better bureaucracy underpinning government and public services. The NDIS debacle is but one example, and there are so many others.
Imagine the resistance that will be encountered when attempting to take action to effect change, it will be ugly. Bold determination, well-informed thinking and slick planning will be essential. A bloodless revolution, if such is even possible?
I guess it’s easy to sit from afar and criticise the war in Iran and its consequences. We have brought those consequences in ourselves with successive governments of either stripe and their stupid policies. Who knows how it will end. Regime change was never an aim. The Iranians welcomed in the Islamic Republic. Now they are the ones to change it! Look at the mess the Americans, British and us made in the rest of the Middle East. Israel pays the price.
And yet those in authority must continue to pay lip service to the concept that the climate is significantly affected by carbon dioxide. Real objectivity can only come from an admission that this is a failed theory, not supported by reality.
Absolutely brilliant piece Chris.
Forgive me for being glass half full but in the end, Australia will adapt - we have the resources and geopolitical resources and positioning to do so, and will be forced to : however this may well take 15 years ++ of pain.
Let’s hope the submarines are ready by then?😂
The Iranians were about to take delivery of 100s of MANPADS and Chinese supersonic antiship missiles so no the timing wasn’t wrong. Sloppy article
Agree President Trump is anything but stupid. I think he saw a rare opportunity to remove the rotten Iranian regime. However sometimes these things don't turn out as planned.
I don't see too many news articles criticizing Trump for removing the Venezuelan thug in Chief.
The administration is playing chess (from its perspective) within the rules but using different gambits that traditional players don’t use or value. Some moves appear to have immediate local import as well as obscure or obscured remote intermediate impact. Passivity and genuflection to the old order it is not investing in, as the us cowrote the world rules post ww1, wrote the rules post ww2, rewrote them in 197x, edited them in 2008. It is now rewriting them again from scratch. The.earth majority wanted a multipolar world and you now have it: India, China, the US and on a very good day for a couple of hours the EU. The previous rules were gamed by the entrenched, smart and forceful. Hats off to uk in reinsurance, Switzerland in secret bank accounts, the Chinese in phenomenal deceit, theft and near slavery. Etc. that is over.
We should have coal liquefaction - at least for supplying our Defence Forces. Germany did it in WW2, under Apartheid so did South Africa and China produces a significant portion of their fuel this way.
Also - irrelevant to this discussion AUKUS is a colossal waste of money and I fear Australia sailors will end up as accidental war criminals.
I believe we may already be complicit via Pine Gap, which I am sure intercepted and forwarded intelligence in the prosecution of an undeclared war and assassinations.
Trump is dismantling the uk and Europe's control of the shipping lanes via insurance. This move by Trump controls oil and lng. Also tighter controls of all shipping targeting unregistered ships
The author makes a lot of good points, but incorrectly places the blame on this one event. It’s a big world out there, and if it wasn’t this war, it would have been something else that would have shown the folly of intentionally making yourself dependent on others for necessities. A war (started somewhere else or by someone else), terrorism, sovereign debt crisis, natural disaster or name your crisis is bound to happen at some point.
Any one of these could throw Australia and other countries into the situations they are in now.
And this was completely preventable.
Australians are too Fn dumb to to exploit our own resources. And have been since we sold all our wool to England and bought back woollen blankets, woollen suits & woollen jumpers all manufactured in England. We import 75% of our nitrogen fertiliser made from natural gas from Qatar despite having major natural gas fields, all of which is exported. We shut down all our oil refineries except 2. We give away our coal but don't have 1 coal to liquid fuels plant built or planned. Uranium is exported to power nuclear plants all around the world and we don't have even 1. We manufacture nothing except a multicultural paradise where half of Sydney doesn't speak English. And we were the first nation to support an illegal war against Iran hours after 170 school girls were blown to bits. Our foreign military bases in Australia supply Satellite Intelligence for targeting Iranian infrastructure. We sanction Russia & join AUKUS to "contain" China, our largest trading partner. Wow... talk about the "Clever Country". And we support without question genocide, and if you say you don't support murder of children & mothers, you go to jail. What a freaking great country we have become. And, we are about to pay for it. BIG TIME.
I agree with you, Australia has enough natural resources in the country to make almost any industry possible and the sooner we become self reliant, the sooner we will become a superpower. Exporting our resources overseas to be made into steel, car batteries, fertiliser etc is long sighted stupidity. After Trump blew up the world, surely our politicians have learnt a valuable lesson, the more we produce onshore insulates us from the problems we are facing today as a result of an unjust war on Iran.
Furthermore, why should a man like Trump, a man that is need of urgent psychiatric treatment for, be allow anywhere near the button that sets off a nuclear war and Iran, who hasn’t really had an all out war in over 300 years, not be allowed enriched uranium.
My understanding is the last four Avenger Class minesweepers that had been in Behrain were decommissioned on Sept 2025 (& shipped back to the US in January 2026). I believe Joe Biden was President at the time of the official decommissioning. I’m not a fan of Joe Biden or Donald Trump (didn’t vote for either), but when you write the following, it seems rather biased & the timing of this decommissioning of these longtime effective / experienced Avenger Class minesweepers was more of a questionable judgement issue with the Pentagon’s Chief of Staff & CENTCOM in 2025;
“The presence of the minesweepers was testimony to the fact the US had understood this risk for 40 years. Donald Trump chose to ignore it.”
For what it is worth, my guess is there will be no accountability on this minesweeper issue with either the top brass generals of the Pentagon’s Chief of Staff or CENTCOM.