Been following the fuel situation pretty closely this week, and there’s a lot to unpack. Roger Cook invoking emergency powers in WA under the Fuel, Energy and Power Resources Act 1972 has got people either cheering or crying government overreach — and honestly, I think a lot of the critics are missing the point entirely.

Let’s be clear about what actually happened here. This wasn’t some dramatic state of emergency like we saw during COVID. Cook used specific legislative powers to force fuel companies to disclose how much fuel they actually have and where it’s stored. That’s it. The reason? Companies were apparently hiding behind “supply contract confidentiality” clauses to avoid sharing that information. Which means Gina Rinehart’s operations, BHP, Rio, Twiggy’s empire — they potentially have millions of litres sitting at their mine sites while the rest of WA is sweating about supplies. The audacity is genuinely breathtaking.

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.