Diver Dan,
The politicians are still aiming for significant growth.
That is the problem in a nutshell.
They should be planning to introduce a steady state economy that before
it undertakes a major project looks to see how energy intense it will
be after it is finished.
An example is motorway construction versus railway realignment and
electrification.
Which when finished is the most energy intense and/or economically viable ?

The likely answer to that is made obvious by CSIRO's prediction of $8 a litre for petrol by 2020.

Diver, I just read Henry Thornton's blog and he illustrates just what
is the problem.
He discusses the problems that Australia faces but his whole discussion
is about money and finance. He misses the point entirely.

It is all about the cost and availability of energy.
Cheap energy has finished and until that is recognised they will just be flapping around.

…Both “majors” (Bazz), have presided over the stampede of industry to Asia; to the ever increasing foreign investment into a free-for-all in the housing market; a blinkered view of immigration and it’s negative side, (and, on your theme of energy crisis, super abundant natural gas in Queensland, has been rendered unaffordable by the the Government obsession with world parity pricing, which totally ignores domestic realities of need)!

…Both parties are as guilty of hiding the problem of unemployment under the cloak of Social Security payments, corralling the unemployable into dead-end lanes of hand-outs; and lo, now those same recipients are to be blamed for the (apparently) bad state of the economy, and loudly castigated as the cause, not the effect, of the problem!

…As we know Bazz, the real and abiding problem with Australia is not the people, it is without doubt the caliber of those in the control of the political agenda.

Dan Diver said;
…As we know Bazz, the real and abiding problem with Australia is not
the people, it is without doubt the caliber of those in the control of
the political agenda.

Well I have to disagree with you here.
I have given a few, very few, talks on the risk to oil supplies and it
is interesting to hear the responses.
Typically to those who have even heard about it the response is;
"Oh that could never happen the government would never let it happen."
That group at the suggestion that the airline industry may be ending is
horrified at the very suggestion.

Another group that is better read on this sort of thing insists that
there is more oil than we could ever use.
Some quote a new oilfield discovered somewhere at say 5 billion
barrels and are shocked when I say that would last the world 58 days.

Another will say there are many oil wells that "they" have just
capped in the outback just to keep the price up.
They have no answer when I ask, why would they drill miles under the
ocean floor at enormous expense when they could just run a pipeline
to the capped wells ?

They also cannot accept what society might be like when we cannot
afford to buy petrol for our cars.

That is the public the politicians are dealing with.
What politician will say that he is planning a rationing system and
that you might only get 20 litres a week.

Oh God, How am I going to drive to work ?