The Great Australian Fuel Crisis Irony: A Study in Doublethink
There’s a particularly delicious irony unfolding right now that would be funny if it wasn’t so utterly predictable. The same people who’ve spent years railing against renewable energy—telling us solar and wind are unreliable, that we need to stick with good old fossil fuels—are now the loudest voices complaining about fuel prices shooting through the roof.
You genuinely couldn’t write this stuff.
The whole situation has been brought into sharp focus with the current fuel crisis, and the responses I’ve been seeing online range from the darkly comedic to the genuinely infuriating. Someone pointed out that Barnaby Joyce was on ABC Insiders talking about building a new oil refinery. The same Barnaby Joyce whose government shut down six refineries when he was in power. The cognitive dissonance is absolutely staggering.
The thing is, people who’ve been paying attention have been warning about this for years. Australia’s energy sovereignty—or lack thereof—has been a ticking time bomb. We’re a country blessed with abundant sunshine, massive coastlines perfect for wind generation, and yet we’ve been exporting our natural resources while remaining dependent on overseas refineries and supply chains that can be disrupted at the drop of a hat. Someone in the discussion made a brilliant point: we need to heavily tax our natural resource exports while there’s still a global market for them and use that money to become self-sufficient energy-wise.
But no, apparently that’s “woke” thinking. Apparently wanting Australia to have energy independence and not be at the mercy of global fuel markets makes you some kind of leftie trying to “kill the weekend.” The whole “you can’t have a proper Aussie barbecue without fossil fuels” argument is so absurd it’s almost performance art.
The other day I was driving through the city and noticed something interesting—traffic seemed lighter than usual, particularly the massive diesel utes that have become so common. There’s a certain schadenfreude in seeing a Ram being driven like it’s carrying precious cargo because the fuel gauge is dropping faster than the driver’s bank account. These vehicles, designed for American snow conditions with their comically long wheelbases, utterly unsuited for Australian off-road conditions, now reduced to cautious crawling because every heavy press of the accelerator is another five dollars gone.
Look, I get it. Not everyone who drives a large vehicle is some right-wing ideologue. Plenty of people need trucks for work. But there’s a disconnect that’s hard to ignore—the same demographic that’s been most vocal about opposing renewable energy transition, about coal being essential to our way of life, about electric vehicles being impractical, are now complaining bitterly about fuel costs they should have seen coming a mile away.
The renewable energy argument has never been just about environmental concerns (though those are critical). It’s about energy security. It’s about not having your economy held hostage by international supply chains and geopolitical tensions. It’s about not having to ship crude oil halfway around the world to refineries in Asia and then ship it back as refined fuel because we shut down our own refineries for short-term profit margins.
What frustrates me most is the wilful ignorance. Someone in a discussion I saw pointed out that most of the trucks in Gina Rinehart’s mines are electric, charged by solar panels. The technology exists. The business case exists. But apparently we can’t have us ordinary folks using “her sun” for our own energy needs. The irony of mining magnates investing heavily in renewables for their own operations while funding political campaigns against renewable energy for public use is almost too much to bear.
The truth is, those who’ve been most opposed to renewable energy haven’t been concerned with reliability or practicality. They’ve been protecting vested interests—either their own financial stakes or those of their mates. Some people, I suspect, simply oppose renewables because they dislike the people who support them. They’ve decided their position first and then adopted whatever justifications fit. That’s not policy, that’s tribalism, and it’s costing all of us.
What gives me some hope is seeing the tide slowly turn. The current government is trying to get more funding through the Future Made in Australia fund. Canadian PM Carney’s recent address to our parliament about state sovereignty and middle powers becoming more self-reliant resonated because it’s what many of us have been thinking. We need certain things—food, energy, and medicine—to be immune to supply chain breakdowns. We’re doing okay with food, we could and should be fine with energy, and medicine is harder but not impossible.
The reality is that spinning up refineries now would put us in a financial hole for decades, and voters would eventually scream about the cost once the current crisis is a distant memory. But investing in renewable energy infrastructure? That’s a long-term solution that actually makes us more resilient, not less. Solar doesn’t require tanker ships. Wind doesn’t need to be refined in Asia. Battery storage doesn’t depend on geopolitical stability in the Gulf.
The fact that we’re even having this conversation in 2025 is a failure of leadership going back decades. But at least now, with fuel prices forcing people to confront the reality of our dependence on fossil fuels, maybe—just maybe—some minds are changing. Though I’m not holding my breath for those who’ve built their entire identity around opposing “woke” environmental policies to suddenly have a moment of reflection.
The conservatives reflecting on their past behaviour? Now that would be the real renewable miracle.