Front page of today's The West Australian.

So, by the time the petrol stations get around to passing on the fuel excise cut the price will have already gone up and made the cut worthless.

Typical.

greggerypeccary wrote on Mar 31^st, 2026 at 3:10pm:


Yeah - and they've been doing that for as long as I can remember. Same when the price of oil drops or rises.

flip page x2

Frank wrote on Apr 1^st, 2026 at 12:37pm:


Did you watch 4Corners on Monday night regarding the mess our Universities are in?

The Big 4 consulting firms all infiltrating boards & jobs.

KPMG
Deloitte
Ernst & Young
Price Waterhouse Coopers

and a couple of similar operating smaller Australian consultancies.

Truly scandalous.

The same as all these Insurance Co.s, Banks & Govt entities bringing in the same consultants to push dodgy practices -

PwC Australia was found to have infiltrated the ATO & Treasury.

Frank wrote on Apr 1^st, 2026 at 12:37pm:


"Regulation drives everything away" is one of those slogans that sounds convincing right up until you look at what actually happened.

Australia didn't lose refining capacity because regulation made it impossible to operate. We lost it because policy settings handed the entire sector over to global market logic, where the only thing that matters is short-term profitability. In other words, the lack of regulations.

And in that environment, local refining was always going to lose.

Why run ageing, smaller-scale facilities here when you can import cheaper refined fuel from massive overseas refineries operating at a scale we simply don't match? The "market" did exactly what it's supposed to do, it optimised for cost, not resilience.

That's how we ended up dependent on imports, with what's left of domestic capacity hanging by a thread at places like Ampol Lytton Refinery and Viva Energy Geelong Refinery.

Now fast forward to a world where geopolitical instability actually matters again thanks to Trump lurching into conflict with Iran, which has threatened supply routes and spiked global prices overnight, and suddenly that "efficient" system looks a lot like a strategic vulnerability.

This is the part the "regulation is bad" crowd never grapple with:

If you want sovereign capability, whether that's fuel security, manufacturing, or anything else, you don't get it by stripping everything back and hoping the market will just decide to maintain unprofitable but critical infrastructure out of goodwill.

You get it through:

- regulation
- subsidies
- or direct government involvement

In other words, deliberate policy choices.

You can argue about how much and what kind, but pretending regulation is the reason we don't have these industries ignores the reality that in key cases, it's the absence of intervention that hollowed them out in the first place.

You don't get to demand "energy self-sufficiency" while also demanding the exact conditions that make it uneconomic to maintain.

Jasin wrote on Apr 1^st, 2026 at 2:36pm:


So you voted for Bill Shorten then?

SadKangaroo wrote on Apr 1^st, 2026 at 1:59pm:



Stop right there.

That was exactly Lee's point ( and mine).

Policy setting, a.k.a regulations, have made Australia a less favourable investment destination.

Frank wrote on Apr 1^st, 2026 at 3:20pm:


Wrong.

There was no regulations or government support keeping local storage and refining in Australia. Policy settings didn't force it, they enabled the big oil companies to chase profit, strip everything offshore, and let local capacity crumble.

I can't even argue with them: it was the cheapest, most profitable option. Without laws or mandates compelling them to stay for national security, they left, and they had every incentive to do so.

Now everyone bleats about blaming Albo for the situation we're in and that Australia needs bigger reserves and stronger local refining.

Achieving that will require regulation, intervention, and government action. Do you honestly think these oil giants will reverse course on their own and rebuild Australian capacity at their expense?

So you don't want Albo to do any of that regulation stuff, but you still want to blame him for the current situation over Trump, who started an illegal war against the advice of his military advisors, who are now being accused of not briefing him properly to protect him further.

What...

That's almost as retarded as saying tourism is woke.

So you want:

No regulation.
No assistance.
No national security safeguards.

But you want better local capacity for storage and fuel refinement.

How?

SadKangaroo wrote on Apr 1^st, 2026 at 3:44pm:



You're right it started with Shorten in 2012.