As the situation in the Persian Gulf escalates by the hour, so too does it elsewhere, sans the missiles and drones.
It feels eerily similar to the pre-COVID border closure phase where people knew there was a problem but it didn’t hit home until that fateful day in March 2020. It’s about to hit Australia in a big way, and like COVID many are grossly unprepared for a worst case scenario.
The usual caveat of this whole issue in the Middle East being resolved applies, but it doesn’t look like it’s getting solved anytime soon and much of the damage has already been done. At a bare minimum, the US bases in that region are never returning after most of them have been destroyed by Iranian missile and drone technology, notwithstanding the complete failure of the United States to protect their Emirati hosts.
Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump are currently cooking up a hare-brained scheme to air drop thousands of marines onto Kharg Island, in an essential suicide mission versus waves of FPV drones and no way to re-supply or extract – but everything is going well as they’ve also destroyed all of Iran’s air force, navy and mobile launchers apparently.
I won’t dive into the military specifics of the war as it’s being covered by much smarter people online than me, but I will say that much of the so-called right wing commentary on the war in Australia has been absolute amateur hour and many still think it’s 2003 and that carriers and manpower wins wars – not anymore.
Iran has the world economy by the balls and Operation Epic Fury may as well be named Epic Fuck Up.
The real question from the conflict remains: does Israel get desperate enough to use a nuclear weapon? If the answer is yes, then forget everything I said as it will be literal anarchy by that point. There’s already talk of Iranian drones attacking a US coastal city which is way beyond their capabilities, and you can safely assume it wouldn’t be them doing it and more likely shades of the USS Liberty. Either way, Dennis Richardson will be the smartest man in the room as the current Royal commission into anti-Semitism will be even more meaningless than it is now.
As far as Australia and the South Pacific is concerned, we are in deep trouble due to the Straits of Hormuz remaining closed. It is only open to countries allied with Iran (namely China) and with each passing day it remains closed, the situation at home grows potentially worse.
Both Vietnam and Thailand are telling people to work from home where possible, and it looks like those climate lockdowns that were dismissed as fantasy a few years ago are now entering the fray as fuel lockdowns in disguise. New Zealand is also considering driving restrictions.
Our fuel situation is dire. We currently only possess 25 days worth, less than 30% of the IEA standards of 90 days and haven’t complied since 2012. We import 90% of our oil, despite sitting on some of the largest deposits in the southern hemisphere both onshore and offshore. Australia had eight oil refineries at one stage, we’re now down to just 1.5 operating currently, with no sizeable storage capacity to boot.
In a worst case scenario, that 25 days would be diverted straight to emergency services and other essential services – you and I will be walking down to Woolworths and punching on over toilet paper. They could cut the fuel excise, but that means nothing when you can’t get supply and the revenue loss will blow another massive hole in both the budget and Jim Chalmers’ rear end.
Predictably, the green energy zealots are out trying to force the electrification issue, completely ignoring the requirement of oil in anything “green” in the supply chain and the total failure of our energy security, in a nation that should be the Saudi Arabia of resources in the southern hemisphere.
The complacency of our self-hating, Generation X managerial class means this isn’t getting fixed and the only person in politics taller than Kos Samaras, Chris Bowen, continues to do next to nothing about it. He has just announced that he will order the release of lower grade sulfur fuels, which are terrible for your car
and the environment. It seems net zero has now gone out the window, so the rest of the bullshit pretence about “climate change” can as well.
Bowen’s brainfart was only after his offsider Tim Ayres accused anyone questioning the fuel storage situation as “far right extremism”:
Labor Senator Tim Ayres says Australians concerned about sovereign fuel capacity are taking an “extreme right-wing approach” and suggests buying an electric vehicle so fuel prices won’t matter when driving past petrol stations. pic.twitter.com/OLUnlX2jSu
— Australians vs. The Agenda (@ausvstheagenda) March 5, 2026
Pauline Hanson has demanded an inquiry into our lack of strategic reserve, but just last week was deep throating Israel for attacking Iran for no reason:
Pauline Hanson congratulates “Senator Trump” and Benjamin Netanyahu for their intervention in Iran. pic.twitter.com/LGjt1yzONo
— Australians vs. The Agenda (@ausvstheagenda) March 2, 2026
There’s your great nationalist saviour, Australia – decrying our fuel situation but then blindly supporting the very country that started the whole debacle and has wanted a war for Iran for nearly 40 years. When you’re fighting over the last loaf of bread at the supermarket, just visualise Pauline wearing that Israeli scarf in Parliament.
The late Jim Molan and former Senator Rex Patrick, both ex-military men, had been pushing for a number of years to get a strategic reserve of some description constructed, but were continually met with scorn.
In the midst of COVID in 2020, current opposition leader Angus Taylor had the genius idea to secure fuel for Australia with uncertainty around freight and shipping, albeit thousands of kilometres away in the United States. This was eventually sold in 2022 and now we basically have nothing.
Realistically speaking, a strategic reserve strategy doesn’t just require a storage location – you need pipelines, refineries and a merchant fleet at a minimum to make it work effectively and we have next to none of that.
Ideally, Australia should have fuel storage in every single state. As others have mentioned, the tyranny of distance and the dispersal of the population centres and industry make it a minimum for any serious repository. If Japan has 240 days of reserve, we need similar or greater.
Japan imports 70% of its oil from the Persian Gulf, South Korea around 65%. These are two of Australia’s biggest trading partners and the flow-on effects here are massive, least of all the inbound inflation across the board on just about everything, because we don’t make anything anymore.
Australia’s biggest trading partner, China, has further announced a freeze on the export of jet fuel which has put our aviation and travel industries on the brink.
The bigger concern here is fertiliser and the food chain, which is linked with the ability to get it to the supermarkets via trucks, with drivers now paying north of $3 a litre for diesel in some places.
Australia doesn’t refine or produce urea, a key component in the production of fertiliser, anymore following the closure of the Gibson Island facility recently. 80% of this comes from Qatar which is closed for business, as well as 40% of the world’s helium which is used in a huge number of industrial processes.
There is a planned urea production facility in South Australia, however it will be years before coming online and the Foreign Investment Review Board should actually take a look at this one closely.
The point is, if there’s no fertiliser then there’s no food in one planting season and inflation is going through the roof. Which leads to the greater point of national security, of which we largely have none.
The potential for civil unrest due to food and fuel shortages is massive and if I was either the head of the AFP or ASIO, I would be in the media everyday about this. Instead, they’re busy arresting whoever the Israel lobby doesn’t like for saying hurty words.
The number of foreigners we’ve imported has lit a potential tinderbox of violence if food shortages get worse than COVID – this isn’t a blackpill, it’s a very real possibility. If you thought social cohesion is bad now, wait until you can’t get food because the trucks can’t get diesel to deliver them to the supermarket and you’re competing with an entire universe of Star Wars’ names who arrived yesterday just to feed your family.
I’m not trying to be hyperbolic, but this is a real risk if the Straits of Hormuz are not opened soon, and they won’t be for weeks in my humble opinion.
We can partially head this off. We have nearly 3 million temporary visa holders here – they should be the first on the flights out of the country before we run out of Avgas. This would drive demand and competition for shrinking resources down rapidly and allow us to head off a lot of potential conflict. The other stuff is a long term fix but we are in extraordinary times and extraordinary measures are needed.
Unfortunately, the treasonous Tony Burke is trying his best to recruit 93 million new protection visa applicants from Iran for marginal Labor Party seats, beginning with the Iranian soccer team. However, it is a whitepill to see many of them change their minds and go home.
Australia needs to start deporting en masse and now, or the toilet paper wars of 2020 will turn into the actual civil war of 2026.
Header image: The only service station in the town of Batlow runs out of fuel (Joe McGirr MP – Facebook).
