A salutary lesson in how to make a bad situation worse without really trying?

All while sitting on top of a potential world beating hydrocarbon resource treated like an untouchable (ve do not eat beef) sacred cow!

And given published estimates are even partly borne out; a brand new(match the economy) revenue stream the like of which they've never seen before!?

If they need some advice on how to develop such a resource as a public venture they could ask the pragmatic norwegians, who might even be able to help with a spare rig or two, currently sitting idle and therefore possibly available for rent?

To date all australian governments have refused to get into our own resource projects; like the mountains of iron ore in the west, which were reportedly financed initially with a virtually worthless letter of credit?

Look, traditional Australian sweet light crude produces four times less carbon than than we import, due to the fact it can be be used virtually as is without costly energy consuming, carbon creating refining!

The usual put off or put down is we don't know what hydrocarbon resources may lay under our reef!

Correct!

And when Lance went cap in hand to seek finance or a government partner, we had no idea how much wealth we had as mountains of the purest iron ore in the world!

So pure we're told so as to allow two chunks to be welded together.

Several decades later a badly led W.A. government is crying poor and crying foul over the GST distribution.

Just think how different it might be if some pragmatic leader had, like a visionary Lee Kuan Yu, used the brains he or she was born with and decided to keep and indeed develop our resources for us; rather than yet another tax avoiding multinational?

Smart folks wouldn't fiddle the figures, when with just the stroke of a pen they could create brand new ones, as well as genuine huge new surpluses!
Rhrosty.

In the news this morning another unexplained mystery oil slick near the Great Barrier reef just south of Townsville!

Currently we import around 91% of our oil requirements and have paid up to 21 billions per for the privilege! And through the neck at the bowser!

Moreover, we have been reduced at times to just a week's worth of surplus even as our coastal tanker traffic is being de-Australianised!

Simply put just as you can't kill a living tree by drilling a few holes in it; neither can you seriously harm a reef by drilling a few holes in it! That being so, just as long as we need to use oil and gas, we should get it locally; and in so doing reduce our traffic created carbon output by around 75%!
Something we should do on oft stated environmental, as well as sound economic grounds!

Incidentally, the Great Barrier Reef is not one great big reef but many different reefs living atop a submerged mountain! Which unsurprisingly you can see from space!

I'll bet the Great Dividing range is just as visible and just as unremarkable!

It's way past time we stopped listening to this ultra emotive economy harming Green B.S.

And not only started thinking for ourselves, but emulating visionary Leader Lee Kuan Yu and begin developing our own resources (airline, a telco, whatever) in government ownership!

Or is true democratic socialism, just a good slogan, or misnomer, with which to (fool the people with) win elections with?

How much better could we do if we had an extra import replacing 10-20 billions plus added to the state coffers Annually?

And let's not forget where there's oil there's usually gas!

Think how many new industries could we attract with ultra cheap NG; and the income earned from its distribution completely replacing payroll tax!? Well?
Rhrosty.

I think Labor was taking accounting lessons from Greece.

Rhosty, according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_threats_to_the_Great_Barrier_Reef
....
It was suspected that the Great Barrier Reef is the cap to an oil trap, after a 1923 paper suggested that it had the right rock formation to support "oilfields of great magnitude". After the Commonwealth Petroleum Search Subsidies Act of 1957, exploration activities increased in Queensland, including a well drilled at Wreck Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef in 1959.[73] In the 1960s, drilling for oil and gas was investigated throughout the Great Barrier Reef,[74][75] by seismic and magnetic methods in the Torres Strait, along "the eastern seaboard of Cape York to Princess Charlotte Bay" and along the coast from Cooktown to Fraser Island. In the late 1960s, more exploratory wells were drilled near Wreck Island in the Capricorn Channel, and near Darnley Island in the Torres Strait, but "all results were dry".[73]

In 1970, responding to concern about oil spills such as the Torrey Canyon, two Royal Commissions were ordered "into exploratory and production drilling for petroleum in the area of the Great Barrier Reef". After the Royal Commissions, the federal and state governments ceased allowing petroleum drilling on the Great Barrier Reef.[4][76] A study in 1990 concluded that the reef is too young to contain oil reserves.[77] Oil drilling remains prohibited on the Great Barrier Reef, yet oil spills due to shipping routes are still a threat to the reef system, with a total of 282 oil spills between 1987-2002.

...So why do you persist in claiming otherwise? What evidence do you have that the oil's under there?

Rhrosty, "In the news this morning another unexplained mystery oil slick near the Great Barrier reef just south of Townsville!"

Wasn't that investigated and absolutely nothing, zilch, was found?

Mark it up to yet another scare campaign by the Greens to score a headline and continue their narrative.

onthebeach, this isn't anything to do with the Greens. And generally the scare campaigns originate fron the Liberals rather than the Greens.

Look what ABC news reported:
"A sheen and small patches of oil about a metre in diameter were reported by water police and an Emergency Management Queensland helicopter off Cape Upstart, about 126 kilometres south-east of Townsville on Friday.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) sent aircraft from Cairns to conduct further inspections of the ocean, islands and coastline south of Townsville this morning and had not found any oil yet.”

finding no oil yet doesn't equate to discovering that the oil slick wasn't there. But it was newsworthy not because environmental effects but because of concern that a boat may have sank.

The beachy bloke sees things as conspiracy's out to get him.

This bloke is a Consultant to Green Square(who ever they are) with Henry Ergas one of NEWS LTD trained economic seals along with Sloan, funny how he never said a word about Qld direction under the now discredited Newman/Courier mail dictatorship.
Just another Right wing whinger

The fact that some exploration may have ruled out wreck island only proves there's probably no oil near wreck island; other folk were prepared to spend their own money if only they could obtain an exploration licence And it's been widely reported we may have around 5 billion barrels of sweet light crude in the townville trench and lots more just a little further out.

Just because the article and the expert commentary claiming we may have a resource to rival the Middle East appeared in the mid seventies in an industry publication doesn't prove very much except I may have a very reliable memory and I read the article; and the information has yet to appear online?

Typically the greens will latch onto any excuse or character assassination to put a stop to any and all reef exploration!

We should just crack on and develop the oil we're sure is in the townsville trough and use the revenue earned to explore the rest of the reef more thoroughly!

[The "Green" promised tourists are staying away in drives while many operators go to the wall or are being killed by the cost of fuel!]

And given we're talking about a largely unexplored area the size of Victoria, the possibilities given the sheer number of mystery oil slicks, are astronomical!

This is not 1928 and we have far more accurate instruments and exploration methods in the kit bag today!

Well past Time we stopped listening to the obstructionist greens and started to look if only to know the size of the resource we may being asked to lock away forever all while we import vastly dirty more pollution transport fuel.

The last time I looked we'd lost around 95% of our manufacturing base to the rest of the world!

And due no doubt in my mind to the obstructionist activity to completely implacable green, who are no better than graffiti vandals claiming ownership of public space.
Rhrosty.

IMF austerity programs are designed to weaken economies to the point when valuable businesses, state-owned infrastructure, and potentially valuable real-estate can be taken over, wages lowered, and the one percent who own ninety-nine percent of the planet's riches can rest secure in their ill-gotten wealth.
We have a government that wants to govern for all Queenslanders, not just the wealthy few like the Newman gang. Quality of life rests on more than the fluctuations of the stock market and company profits. The myth of trickle down economics was exploded years ago. With laissez fair capitalism, the money always trickles up to the wealthy, creating, as it is doing, an increasing class of poor people. Encourage people to save by making saving profitable, then debts can be whittled down. Mr Branigan's stint with the competition authority has perhaps blinded him to the fact that not everyone has the ability to compete, and competing for the lowest price, instead of the best product is not healthy or sensible.