Ian Verrender

It needs to not be a part of the economy.

We're here to be as small a government as possible.

Let business go.

take care of business and free enterprise rule.

Now, big business, big oil companies decided many years ago when Australia was producing oil to have refineries here because it was silly to be pulling oil out of the Bass Strait and sending it off somewhere else to be refined and bring it back.

When that oil started to run out, they decided that they were not going to upgrade the refineries.

And so you had five of them essentially shut down.

I think there was seven or eight refineries

Um, so you had, there's only two left, one in Brisbane, the Lytton Refinery and another in Geelong.

So Sydney and basically everywhere else in the country have seen their refineries shut.

And, um, you know,

If we did have more refineries here, they would have to be importing crude oil during this crisis.

Now, do you think Australia would be able to compete to buy crude oil from any other country when you've got this mad scramble from highly industrialized economies, Japan, South Korea, everyone else scrambling for oil, and they're really big buyers.

If you were a seller of oil,

And you had a short shortage and you had to select who are you going to sell to?

Are you going to sell to little old Australia down there in the bottom of the Pacific?

Or are you going to sell to the massive economies that are major industrial nations that use infinitely more than Australia does?

You'll pick your biggest market every time.

Well, look, the biggest, one of the big factors with the decision to shut down the refineries was these new massive refineries being built right across Asia.

They're bigger, better economies of scale, cheaper to operate.