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The Albanese Government is spending $20 million to tell Australians to pump up their tyres — while ignoring the PM’s own warnings about fuel security.

Starting yesterday, the government launched a $20m advertising campaign lecturing us on what we can do to conserve fuel.

Now, before we get to the content of the advertisements — thrilling, edge-of-your-seat material like “inflate your tyres” — let’s start with why the ads are necessary in the first place.

I’ll let Agriculture Minister Julie Collins explain:

“This is about responding to Australians who are saying to us that they want to help. They know that we’re all in this together, but this is impacting right across the globe.

“So many Australians want to do what they can to help, and this is really a Team Australia moment where all of us can do a little bit and every little bit helps.”

Really?

Australians are pestering Albanese Government ministers, saying:

“Please, Minister Collins, please… tell us what we can do to save fuel. Help us to help you.”

We’re expected to believe there’s a grassroots movement for tyre pressure awareness?

Ha!

And so the government is spending $20m of our money to tell us how we can help … in a campaign called Every Little Bit Helps.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m on the edge of my seat with anticipation at what the government might advise.

“Every Little Bit Helps” — Except a Plan

Transport Minister Catherine King was on the ABC on Sunday and gave just a little taste of what we can expect when these ads go live across our fuel-parched land today:

Every little bit that you can do can also help. So making those decisions around whether where there’s public transport available taking it where you can, make sure your tyre pressure is right, taking the load out of your car that actually helps with fuel economy.

So the Albanese Government is spending $20m to tell us to take public transport, if we can.

They’re spending $20m to remind us to pump up our Bridgestones.

They’re spending $20m to ask that we lighten our vehicle’s load to help with fuel economy… which is really not necessary, because most of us have already told our mother-in-law she’ll be taking the bus.

Other tips include:

“Drive smoothly”

How dumb does the Albanese Government think we are?

These are the sorts of things you tell your 17-year-old daughter when she gets her learner’s permit.

Here’s Ag Minister Julie Collins again:

This is about how everyday Australians can help and the little things they can do they will make a big difference and to make sure that our fuel continues to flow.

If the government needs us to “drive more smoothly” in order to conserve fuel, we’re in bigger trouble than they’ve led us to believe.

Because that means somewhere, deep in the machinery of state, a very serious person has concluded that the difference between civilisational stability and collapse is Dave from Parramatta taking corners a bit less aggressively.

And just as an aside, how come we’re all being told to consider taking the bus while the PM is jet-setting his way around Asia to do non-binding deals that could have been done over the phone?

But back to this $20m advertising campaign…

The transport minister says it’s necessary because we’ve all been WANTING this information.

Transport Minister Catherine King told the ABC yesterday:

“I think that what the gov is trying to do is to provide as much information to people as possible. I think people are wanting to have information.”

Minister King, please show me just one person who is wanting information on tyre pressure from Labor politicians in the form of a $20m taxpayer-funded advertising campaign.

Next thing, the Prime Minister will be telling us that people want him to interrupt prime time with a three-minute speech about nothing.

Oh, wait. He already did that.

Maybe I’m being too harsh.

Maybe, when you see the government advertisements tomorrow, don’t think of them as advertisements, think of them… as a communications platform.

Here’s Catherine King again:

The government’s building a communications platform really to try to provide that information to people as quickly as we can as we deal with what I said is a global fuel crisis.

That made me laugh.

Not only is the advertising spin. The explanation of the spin… is spin.

Albanese’s Own Words Come Back to Haunt Him

Imagine if, instead of advising us to think about driving less, the PM simply took his own advice.

Back in 2020, Anthony Albanese, then in Opposition, told the ABC:

“Australia should have here 90 days available of liquid fuel reserves.”

He added:

It is in the national interest we shouldn’t be dependent upon circumstances which may be beyond our control in terms of any particular international incident — be it military conflict or other issues will mean that we run out of fuel.

In a rare moment of Anthony Albanese actually being AHEAD of the game, he told the ABC back in 2020:

“If there’s international conflict or issues that provide disruption to sea lanes that may well occur at some stage in the future then that is why nation states need to have this fuel capacity. It’s an issue of national security.”

And he said of the Coalition:

The government needs to emerge with a plan for our refining capacity, for storage here. And they’ve had now, they’ve been there for seven years.

To be fair… Albo’s had four years. But, by his own admission, he came to office well aware that something like what’s happening in the Middle East right now would occur.

Not only has he done nothing to prepare for the circumstances that he himself warned about six years ago, he doesn’t intend to do anything about them.

Oil Is So Last Century, Apparently

His Transport Minister was asked yesterday morning if the fuel crisis meant that we should drill for fuel, or at the very least, make sure we increase our supplies of fuel, as National Leader Matt Canavan has suggested.

Her response:

“I do find it passing strange Matt Canavan trying to take us back to the 1990s or 1980s, not understanding that the world has moved on. The world’s moved on in terms of energy security. We have got this incredible resource here in this country that lots of other countries don’t have. We are a secure stable democracy with the capacity to generate renewables here in this country and then actually electrify.”

Shoring up petrol supplies will take us back to the 1980s?

As recently as 2020, the Prime Minister was insisting that a minimum three-month supply of oil — as well as our own refining capabilities — were essential to national security.

But Catherine King dismisses all of that. Oil is so last century.

This is a government so steeped in failing renewable ideology, they won’t even take their own advice.

And yet they’re going to spend $20m lecturing us!

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image courtesy of The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts.