I mean those bloody oil company experts who have been supplying us for years just are not the sort of people who will fix it according to the public interest, they’ll only rush to fix it to keep making a profit, and thats bad, right. It is important to remember that in the rectification of crises the important thing is the motives of the ‘fixer’ not the results.

This gives us a real chance of getting those carbon quotas implemented via our ration cards, who says there is no silver lining?

Brendan Nelson has just proven himself worthy of all of that confidence I have in him, and hopefully someone more competent will take over soon if the Libs have one.

Anyone who knows about the 1970s and US oil will remember that rationing and price controls led to more shortages as the cost of transportation became prohibitive.

The gas disruption in WA is doubtless a serious impact there.

And it may have sufficient impact to affect the national accounts in due course.

But to use this as the pretext to declare a national state of emergency and assume federal control of all liquid fuels seems just a tad of over-reaction, does it not ?

Controlling distribution of unleaded petrol in Sydney seems hardly likely to keep the lights on and industry working in Perth – even if the gas pipelines are empty and diesel generators are running 24/7 ??

The cynical view ( moi ) might be that this is another Thought Bubble from Dear Leader so as to be seen to be doing something while actually nothing of any consequence.

However, the willingness of both sides of the political class to suggest deploying what are effectively wartime control powers on this basis suggests an extremely worrying precedent as to where the Canberra political classes will look for solutions to the unfurling challenges in energy, food, economics and the like that are piling up.

And I’m nearly finished reading Atlas Shrugged which was written 50 years ago about some hypothetical worst case scenario, only now it doesn’t look so unlikely.

Looks like I’ll want to get a comfy job with the Bureau of Economic Planning and Resources, and maybe end up on the Unification Board, like Wesley Mouch.

So basically the Libs now are an anti-gay rights party?

I’d like to see them try. WA is kind of like the American south in this respect. They’d probably trigger a civil war.

It would mainly apply to gas, as it’s the fuel in short supply following the explosion at Varanus Island. However, other fuels are affected (eg Navy diesel reserves).

Some form of rationing of gas is probably going to be needed. The alternative is for the WA government to remove the guarantee of supply for domestic households and allow the price to rise. There’s an election in WA this year, so you figure out the chances of that.

I agree it all sounds very socialist and fanciful, but the reference to controlling the “production” of crude oil originates from the days when Bass Strait was a significant source.