Interview with Paul Sakkal and Mike Foley, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Inside Politics Podcast

HOST, PAUL SAKKAL: Welcome Chris. MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY, CHRIS BOWEN: Thanks Paul. Good morning.

How are you? We're well. We're recording on a day when there is a fair bit of news around on this issue and a quite a serious news event.

Tell us what you can say about the fire at the Viva oil refinery, one of Australia's only refineries left, one of two, which happened overnight on Wednesday. It looks like diesel production is not affected but petrol very much is. How much of a hit to petrol production could this have, Chris?

So, at this stage we're recording at nine o'clock in the morning on Thursday and the fire broke out at 11 o'clock last night. It's still burning as we speak, it's not yet under control, but I was in communication with the Chief Executive through the night. His best advice to me at this point is that diesel and jet fuel production is not impacted.

It's been reduced for now as a safety precaution. There is likely to be some impact - there is already an impact, and there will be some impact on petrol production, but it is still very early. We're monitoring closely, working closely with the company, and as soon as we have a better line of sight as to the degree of damage, then we'll update people, but it's not a positive development and not great timing.

There was a line from the Viva CEO on Thursday morning saying that there is a hope that we could replace the lower output with increased importation of refined petrol. How would that look? Yeah, and that's part of our arrangements we've put in place with Export Finance Australia to go and get extra cargoes as and when required.

We legislated that very, very quickly. It's progressing well and I think what Scott's talking about, Scott Wyatt, the Chief Executive, is talking about there - potentially using that to make up for some of the shortfall which might be caused by the fire. Yeah okay.

Just on the broader timelines on when we're likely to have fuel stocks locked in for, you've been quite positive pushing out that deadline up to nearly June now, which is the time from which fuel supply might get rocky unless we continue to build out those stocks. Can you run us through the risks on what might occur over coming months and what measures we're taking to ensure that deadline continues to get pushed out, and also what kinds of measures we might need to look at to conserve fuel in coming months?

Yeah so, I think the important thing is a couple of threshold questions, threshold points. Firstly, as I said many, many times, no cargo that we've expected in Australia to arrive has failed to arrive and the refineries until today have been working full pelt. So actually, the supply of fuel to Australia, which is the Federal Government's primary responsibility, has been very solid and we have confirmed forward orders now through May.

So, all the orders through May are locked in, and more than just contracts, we have what's called nominations. What that means is that basically we know when the ships will leave port, in Asia primarily, and when they'll arrive, and ships are beyond. So that's a higher degree of certainty.

Now, there's always risks, and there can be force majeure, but it is contracted and locked in, and indeed more than that we have visibility as to what ships leave what ports and when they arrive in Australia. But the way the import industry works is the ships get locked in four to six weeks in advance, that's how it normally works and that's how it's working at the moment.

So as soon as you get beyond six weeks, you're dealing with a higher degree of uncertainty. There have been orders made for June, but we are not yet in a position to say that all of June is covered. But certainly, all of May is and every day that goes past there's more orders coming in.

Now the risks… All of May is covered now, Chris? That’s slightly more positive than last time you gave this update. Yeah, and that's to be expected because we're making progress each day.

Now you ask what the risks are obviously, 70% of Asia's oil comes through the Straits of Hormuz, so you can only refine oil that you have. Now, I've been speaking not only to the Chief Executives of the Australian companies, but some of the Asian companies as well. They have oil on hand that they are refining and processing, that's why they can enter into contracts into May and through May now.

The Asian refiners are also diversifying their fuel, their oil supply, as most of our refined product comes from Asia but not all of it and it's getting increasingly diversified; Algeria normally supplies about one percent, it's supplying much more than that at the moment, similar with Argentina as well as the United States. So we've been diversifying our supply.

Now what won't happen is we'll get boats and boats and boats and boats and then one day they'll all stop, that is just not going to happen. What is more likely going forward if this situation with the Straits of Hormuz continues for weeks and months is that we have bumps in supply and disruptions, not an immediate a hundred to zero, but we may have some interruptions to supply over the next few months.

But, as I have said, the current situation is 4.1 billion litres locked in for the next four weeks, confirmed contracts and orders, all through May and starting to get into June now, and that's a good thing. Part of what the Government's been up to has been dealing with our Asian neighbours to lock in as much of a guarantee of supply as possible. We understand you spoke to the Japanese Prime Minister on Wednesday night?

Can you explain what you learned from her, and did you gauge concern from the Japanese on the prospect of a new tax on Australian LNG exports? No certainly not, not the latter, that didn't come up. This, to be clear, was a conversation between Asian leaders which the PM asked me to represent him on because obviously he's in Malaysia; so it was the Prime Minister of Japan, the Prime Minister of Singapore, President of East Timor, representatives of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, a whole bunch, and I represented Australia.

I know there were two takeaways for me, and you know I wasn't really sure what to expect, but the two takeaways were: one, let's all work together in the immediate future, that was very common, and we're all better dealing with this together, and two, interestingly, this underlines the need to keep going with our drive towards more reliable renewable energy.

That was very strong amongst the ASEAN leaders, and others to say this is a reminder of why we need to build more reliability and renewable energy and things like the Asian energy grid to basically keep going with that work. HOST, MIKE FOLEY: G'day Chris, thanks for being on the podcast. Thank you.

Well it's great to be able to talk to you a bit behind the news because I had a question about Australia's place in the Asian region where we're getting reports, anecdotal reports from fuel companies that say there's a new trend where some companies that are seeking to import fuel to countries with emerging economies like Thailand, Philippines, whatever those shipments may have become too expensive in some cases for the original customers and that's opening a door in certain instances for Australian companies to, let's say, swoop in.

Now, let's cast our mind back to another global calamity in the COVID crisis where supply chains were disrupted and Scott Morrison, the then Prime Minister, said that this is not a race to get vaccines. What I'm wondering is how does this new trend that's emerging stand for Australia? Is it in good stead in this race to get fuel?

I mean obviously this is a pretty nasty scenario for poorer countries that won't be able to buy fuel as readily as Australian companies can. Can you tell us about this scenario? Is that part of the Government's moves to underwrite private companies that are importing fuel?

So Mike, the situation without commenting on whether other countries are missing out, the situation is basically there are cargos available but they're very expensive and that's why we've done the EFA thing, because two things are happening; they're very expensive, they might be 25 million dollars more than they were a month ago, that's a lot for a cargo, right?

So they're out there. Also because the oil price is moving around quite a bit and because, frankly, it moves on a Donald Trump Truth Social post - like it impacts on the markets, and it takes a while for the cargoes to get to Australia, then it's risky because if they buy a cargo for 25 or 50 million dollars and by the time it gets to Australia, the oil prices collapse and they've exposed their shareholders.

So that's the whole principle behind our intervention with Export Finance Australia. So, I'm sort of agreeing with you that yes there's cargoes out there, they're very expensive. Is Australia well placed to get them?

Well with the EFA intervention, yes, we are. And another thing I've been dying to ask, sort of a bit behind the news here, where we saw those alarming… Behind the news, did you used to watch that as a kid like I did at school - Behind The News, ABC? I pretended to understand it, but I was probably too lazy to take it in.

I was more interested in watching cartoons. We're just a tiny bit more advanced than that program, but just a little bit. We try to reach their standards of journalism, let's put it that way.

But Chris, local oil shortages surveys ran out of petrol and diesel, and we heard and we saw evidence, to be fair, that was due to panic buying. But what I'm wondering, surely there are only so many jerrycans that motorists can fill up across the country, and I want to know what we learned about regional supply chains and how those panic buying shortages actually occurred.

What I'm really asking is, were big companies commercial and industrial fuel users understandably stocking up, were they a driver of some of those or a factor in the shortages? Partly. So, a few things were happening at once, right?

So, there was a big increase in demand and as I said publicly, I don't like lumping all that into one category. Some was panic buying, no question about it. Some was people buying jerrycans and trying to sell them on Facebook marketplace which is pretty ordinary behaviour.

Some was just people thinking well the price of fuel is going to go up so I'm going to buy while I can which I don't regard as panic buying that's more sort of just bringing forward purchases. But to your point, and I'm glad you've asked this, because it is important and does go to explaining to people a bit what's been going on here. The fuel market really works in two systems: the contracted market and the spot market.

The contracted market tends to work in the cities and the big players, the big miners etc and the spot market tends to be what works in the bush and with a contracted market. You don't have a contract to say we will buy X million litres a month. You're able to buy between this and that.

So, you have a contracted amount which a minimum and then a maximum, and what happened was everyone with a contract immediately bought their maximum, just bought as much as they could, and now the refineries were legally obliged to honour those contracts. And that moved to what was called in the industry bulk allocations, which means basically the contracts are taking the fuel and so for those who play the spot market, then the spot market wasn't working because the contract market was taking it all.

Now some people said, 'oh this is just the cities looking after themselves at the expense of the bush'. Well, that wasn't the intention. It was just that the city works on contracts, and you're right, a lot of the big miners and the big companies, the big industrial users of fuel also understandably have contracts in place because security supply is so important to them and so the spot market really failed to work because the contracted market was taking up all the fuel.

I might just move into broader questions on how the oil crisis will affect the green energy agenda and the green energy debate. You said earlier this week, Chris, that the oil shock was spurring a shift away from fossil fuels. Does that not jar with the fact that the Prime Minister has upended his schedule to head to Asia to try and secure fuel that we do not have in Australia because we've either not drilled or reduced our refining capacity?

No, I don't think so, Paul. I mean, I've seen that argument run by some in politics and in media. Not at all though in my view because two things can be true, and what I'm talking about is the more medium to long-term trend.

Obviously our first focus, the PM's, mine, has been to secure supply of fuel to Australia, including the PM going to Southeast Asia and including my efforts and the Foreign Minister's efforts and everyone's efforts. So that is a hundred percent true. We are focused on getting that supply in the short term.

That doesn't mean in the longer term you can't make the point that renewable energy is, the more we sort of transition to renewable energy, the more sovereign is our capability and, as I said, Australia is not the only country sort of saying this. It was a very strong theme out of the meeting with the Prime Ministers and Presidents yesterday. It's come up in all my conversations with energy and climate ministers over the last month that I have on the phone with them.

Everyone's saying well this is underlining why we're doing what we're doing. This is a fossil fuel crisis, right? This is a fossil fuel supply crisis and what's happened in Australia almost inevitably is it gets dragged to the culture war very quickly of people saying well this underlines the need for more fossil fuels.

Well, I don't think that's the conclusion. It's just, I think, a very sensible, calm, moderate observation to say increasing renewables in the mix is actually part of the solution. Not the entire solution but part of the solution and I think Australians are saying that.

You know, you've seen a massive increase in EV sales. You've seen Australians proceeding at pace. I mean 10 percent of the world's battery capacity that was added around the world in March was in Australia.

We'll soon hit 350,000 home batteries. This is Australians since 1 July last year. So, this is Australians just getting on with it.

Sorry to interrupt you, Chris. Would it not be more honest to say that in the long run it adds impetus to the case to do energy sovereignty by renewables but at least in the short or medium term, given we rely so significantly on diesel and other fuels, it also adds weight to the argument that we need more fossil fuel sovereign capacity? Well look as I've said I'm avoiding, deliberately, the culture war on this because the question about whether we should exploit more oil in Australia should be based entirely on engineering and economics, not on cultural issues.

Now so yes, we're open to that but also you can make the case as I make that more energy sovereignty from more renewables is also the case. Now at the moment, we're using 150 million litres roughly of fuel a day. Now the Queensland proposal which we're very open to that, Premier Crisafulli has been highlighting recently would add about 2.4 million litres a day.

Now okay fine, great, you know, that's positive, but let's not pretend it's going to mean that Australia all of a sudden becomes sovereign in oil production and a lot of our oil has already been exploited, and not all oil is oils. Oils aren't oils. Not all oil that we have is necessarily suitable for our refineries.

So, it's more complicated and nuanced than drill baby drill, right? That is just not, again I'm not opposed to more oil extraction in Australia that replaces imports. On the contrary all for it if it stacks up.

But let's look at each proposal on the economics and engineering, not through some sort of culture war because with all due respect there are people in politics and in commentary who will take any opportunity to say ah this shows that renewable energy is not right and we should focus more on fossil fuel. Any opportunity. I mean I remember when Callide power station exploded, David Littleproud was asked what does this mean he said it shows the risks of relying on renewable energy.

I'm sorry how does a coal-fired power station exploding show the risk of renewable energy? They'll take any opportunity for the culture wars about this. Well I won't.

I'll focus on the facts, and the fact is that a sensible common-sense approach would indicate more renewables is also good for sovereignty and reliability. Just on this newly powerful argument from your political opponents on drilling for oil and gas there, I was talking to some energy experts yesterday to try and get a read of all these individual projects. There's Narrabri, Taroom, as you mentioned, the Great Australian Bight, and it feels like across the board there is a combination of commercial reticence for various financial reasons, native title issues, federal environmental hold-ups, local concerns about pipelines, as you say a more complex set of hold-ups and concerns about why we haven't seen drilling in these areas.

I know you're not the sole decision maker because federal environmental law is one thing, you're not even the Minister in charge there. But your preference and the pulpit that you have, and where you would like to see the country go on drilling has significant weight. Is it your preference that we see more drilling in some of these projects, and we see them up and running to a significant degree or is that not the direction you think the country should push in?

Well, as I've said, I think each one's got to be handled on its merits, and let's just quickly look at each of them because I think it does illustrate a good point. Right so very quickly, Great Australian Bight, as I said publicly, Matt Canavan had a go, fair enough issued licences for Great Australian Bight and they were handed back by companies, I think it was BP and Chevron from memory, said this won't work, we can't make it work it's too geologically challenging.

Okay so fine, he had a go, it didn't work, the geology hasn't changed - what changed was the change of government. Narrabri is gas not oil, but it's got all its Federal approvals, it's making its way through the courts on some challenges, but it's got its Federal approvals and the fact that all that gas would go to Australia I think is a good thing. Then the Queensland one that you referred to again, last time I checked, we hadn't received an environmental application, last time I checked with Murray Watt, which was yesterday, no application had been received.

So, you can't approve an application, you can't fast track an application; a press conference is not an application, and on all the work I've seen nothing that would happen till the 2030s anyway. Now, again, I'm not opposed to it, great if it can be made to work, fantastic, it's not going to solve all our problems, so again practical approaches. Yes where it stacks up I'm very happy for exploitation of Australian oil to replace imports, but I'm also happy, very happy, with the transition to renewable energies replacing the need for some of it.

Our EV sales are high, but as a percentage of the fleet pretty modest right because it takes so long to turn the fleet over but even the number of EVs we have operating in Australia at the moment is 15 million litres a week of fuel use avoided. 15 million litres a week, that's not huge but it's not nothing and that's just with a fairly modest take-up let alone when we get much higher penetration of EVs into the system which will reduce fossil fuel dependency even more.

Let's zoom out a bit on the economics of energy investment in Australia, and I know it must seem like years ago but a few weeks ago, the influential head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, came to Australia in a case of unbelievably serendipitous timing, that such a such a big international figure would drop into the press club in Canberra to give a speech.

Bigger than Meghan and Harry some say. Well not for me but you know I have my preferences. Controversial call.

I don't even know what's happening outside this room, but he had a really interesting little vignette of what might be about to explode across global markets. He said that 40% of the world's nuclear energy plants which are poisonously expensive for countries to build, they were constructed directly in the wake of the 1970s oil shocks and this is not a guy who is a renewable energy advocate, he's not a climate change advocate, he was talking very soberly about the risks of fossil fuel dependence and how governments would react, I believe that is a fair characterisation, long story short he thinks that a similar wave of investment could be spurred in renewables.

What's your view on that, just on not necessarily the policy decisions that the Government will make, but how global markets will react and how investors in Australia could react? Yeah, Fatih who's a good friend of mine is 100% right yes and I think that again reflects my conversations with ministers around the world. People that, again in the culture wars, people say everyone's getting back to fossil fuels, that's just not true.

People are getting on with the job of renewable energy, I mean, the investments in renewable energy now massively outpaces investments in fossil fuel, new fossil fuels massively and nuclear by the way I mean we add more renewable capacity every few weeks than gets added in nuclear all year around the world globally and you know something like 90% of new energy that's coming on around the world is renewable and I think that just gets higher because these energy crises are becoming more common.

I've lived through three international energy crises, and I've been energy minister for two of them, there's no causality in my view, what it is a reflection of is that they are coming - [Interrupts] No, I'm sure yes, yes so well everything's my fault but the fact is that when you're moving fossil fuels around the world there's supply chain challenges, you know at the moment the Strait of Hormuz, it might be Asia one day causes that supply chain constraint but I mean it when I say you know nothing can interrupt the flow of sun to Australia and the wind can't be sanctioned and the sun's got to travel 150 million kilometres to get to earth but doesn't have to travel the 150 kilometres of the Strait of Hormuz.

So now again my opponents say oh yeah but you know you need to get the solar panels and wind turbines from other countries yeah that's true we've also got a future made in Australia agenda so that we have more sovereign capability there but also once it's built, it's operating and the flow of energy can't be interrupted. But Chris, sort of on the flip side of the rosy renewables picture that's going to play out over the long term, the Government has lowered fuel standards for slightly more polluting diesel and petrol to be sold, it's subsidising refineries it's subsidised motorist's petrol costs, what does that mean for the near-term pace of energy transition and does it make it materially harder for Australia to reach its emission reduction targets?

No, I don't think so, no not at all. I mean these are these are temporary measures dealing with the immediate crisis internationally, all measures that I’ve put through Government processes to help us through, but we're in a transition and again I understand the question Paul asked before but again the opposition says look you know you're out there getting fossil fuels the transition's starting to halt no there's, two things can be true at the same time.

You can be dealing with an immediate short-term challenge, and you know focused on getting more of the fuel we need for Australians in today at the same time as progressing the medium-term transition which is going at pace. I mean we just hit 50% renewables in the grid last quarter of last year transport emissions came down for the first time ever outside of Covid and that was before the big uptake in EV sales and that'll take time to roll through but we're making good progress there's challenges and headwinds of course but we're making good progress and I think this crisis again underlines the need to keep going doesn't slow it down.

Resilience has been one of the buzzwords that has come out of this crisis similar to the conversation out of the pandemic, we've heard there's some thought being given at a state level and federal level to changing regulations to allow for much more long-haul EVs on the roads which could have a significant effect on our reliance on diesel in the long run. On heavy EVs, how optimistic are you on the role they could play in the transition?

What are you looking at in terms of regulatory changes? Yeah, so a lot of those regulatory changes will be with Catherine King not me in terms of weight and things like that and she's obviously fully on board for the work that we're doing. Look heavy vehicle, heavy haulage is a challenge for decarbonisation but not an insurmountable one it will be slower and harder than light vehicles but not impossible.

You know was just the first EV delivery truck delivery from Sydney to Canberra for example there's companies doing great things including from western Sydney on EV charging for trucks and internationally this is the direction of travel. Last time I looked more than 50 percent of the trucks sold in China are EV trucks more than 50 percent in the huge economy of China are electric.

So am I suggesting electric trucks can replace diesel trucks you know holus bolus in the next 12 months? Of course not, is it the direction of travel for electric to do more on heavy vehicles? Yes, can we help yes are we trying to help yes.

So is the government considering applying fuel efficiency standards or that you know bringing our trucks into the national vehicle emissions standards policy? No, I mean obviously we'll review NVES in due course but there's a reason why it only applies to light vehicles, it's just the heavy vehicles are just a sort of different degree of magnitude and difficulty but there are other things we can and you know, can do, um, to help with heavy vehicle decarbonisation.

What are those things, and I know they're not locked in and not immediate, but what are you looking at? Well, again, I'm not announcing policies, but, you know, we've got work to do on charging. But again, look, the first big EV truck charging facility in Wilton, which is, you know, between Sydney and Canberra, work has started on that.

So, progress is being made. And the regulations around weight and width? Yeah, a matter for Catherine King more than me.

Just on fuel security. Also, quite a lot of rumours in the government that, in the budget, part of this resilience plan will be to up the fuel reserves from the current, you know, month-long reserve to somewhere a little bit higher. We know you're not going to go anywhere near 90 because it costs too much and you've been pretty clear on that.

But is there an argument to up those stocks at least slightly or to a moderate extent over the next few years? Well, we're not announcing the budget today. You know, I've said my immediate focus is immediate supply.

Obviously, when you get through any sort of major shock like this. You look back and say what could be done better, what needs to be improved going forward? And the budget is a fiscal event.

We only have two a year where you have opportunities to look at things, but my immediate focus is getting through the coming weeks and months, obviously. We also look at sensible things. You're right.

Yeah, it's very easy to say, oh, we should have this many days, and that, and it is, again, 90 days, I'm sure, it would be $20 billion over 4 years. And, you know, an ongoing you know the petrol's got to be moved; you can't just build a tank and leave petrol in it. It's got to be moved through.

It goes stale. So that means you've got to have as much petrol as you need. You can have a reserve, but it's not as simple as saying, well, just have unlimited reserves because the petrol market just won't work like that.

So, it is a complicated space. Lots of people come forward with ideas in recent weeks, as you'd imagine. Some of them might end up working, some of them won't and, you know, we'll continue to look in good faith at proposals like that.

And Chris, could you just, you know, let's clear up confusion in the public. I think what are the options for fuel security that the Government has on its table. You know, is it looking at helping private companies drill for oil, what are the options that are on the table?

Well, I'm not going to pre-empt the budget. You know, we do support the two existing refineries. It is in our national interest that they continue.

The challenge for refining in Australia is not environmental. It's not climate despite, again, attempting the culture war to bring it in. It's the fact that our population's, you know, not huge by Asian standards, one thing refineries need is scale, and the big Asian refineries just, you know, are very efficient because they're so huge compared to the relatively small Australian refineries and even the six that existed were relatively small by Asian standards, and so they had trouble competing in that environment.

I think previous governments should have done more. The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government should have done more to save the six that we had, at least some of them. But I don't blame government policy for the problem.

I blame lack of government initiative for stepping in to save them. You know, would have been better if they'd stepped in when there were three or four, not wait till two. Your role in the Government is intriguing.

You cop a lot of flak from the conservative press and your political opponents. I can be triggering. Yes.

Yeah. I think that partly goes to your public style. You're quite aggressive in press conferences, you're pugilistic.

Perhaps that's required in the green energy debate when there's a contentious reform happening. You certainly changed your tone at some point in this crisis to just be a bit softer in press conference. I think that's a fair observation.

Can you explain how you see your role leading the government's great energy agenda? Do you say yourself as a kind of shock absorber for the rest of the government? What will explain how you go about your public persona?

Yeah, I think that they're all fair questions and observations, Paul. I guess a couple of things here. First, it's a controversial portfolio.

You know, again, sometimes when I catch up with my climate and energy minister mates around the world, we compare notes and say, are you, by chance, the most controversial member of your cabinet? And we all say yes, that's the nature of the job because on the left; there's strong views that we're not doing enough and on the right; there's strong views that this is all nonsense, and we shouldn't be doing anything, and I've got to try and weave a course down the middle, and that means you get plenty of free advice on both sides.

Every day. I wake up and read the newspapers with lots of free advice, and that's fine. And again, it gets dragged in cultural wars very quickly.

When I do see disinformation or misinformation, I call it out. You know, I'm not one that sort of lets that pass. And, we're in a political argument with lots of disinformation out there, you know, opinion page after opinion page of climate denial, frankly, which I call out, and that does lead to controversies.

And yeah, I don't take a backward step in the political debate. You’re right though. We've been dealing with a very significant international crisis.

So I've taken the view during this to try and calmly and methodically lay out the facts. That's what I think Ministers should do in this environment. Where, you know, I've made the point that we haven't had any constructive feedback from the Liberal Party, no policy ideas, not one, which is a very different approach to the one I took when I shadow minister during COVID, shadow minister for health during COVID, for example.

I make that observation. But my main focus over the recent months as sort of making political points, rather providing, you know, factual updates, dealing with the incoming inquiries. I've held a press conference almost every day for the last month, almost every day for last month and a half.

Not every day, but you know, a lot of days. Trying to be available to provide that factual information and trying to do so, you know, calmly and there's been, you know, plenty of incoming during that period, just calmly bat it away. Your government made a big promise before it came into government in 2022 on reducing power bills by $275 over a period of years.

We know there was a major land war in Europe that changed a trajectory on prices, but there's been many elements of the green transition that have been bumping outside of the war in Ukraine. Do you regret making the $275 pledge? In hindsight was it a mistake, was it a mistake to ever assume that the transition would not be this bumpy?

So, Paul, I guess what I'd say about this is we've faced challenges. Of course we have. Energy and climate were big issues at the last election.

Big issues in the 2025 election. Peter Dutton said he wanted a referendum on energy and climate, and I was fine with that, and the Australian people knew what we promised in 2022 and they knew what we'd been able to deliver and they knew what we'd tried to do and what work we'd done, and the result is there to see. So, the Australian people took all that into account.

Was energy the only issue in the election? Of course not. But was it a big issue, yes?

You know, some people want to refight the 2025 election in 2028. My view is, we'll fight the 2028 election in 2028. We fought the 2025 election.

The result we were grateful for. Should you have ever made such a declarative [indistinct] That's probably a commentary matter, which I'm going to leave you to make, Paul. I'm a practitioner and a commentator.

We made; we released modelling. I take, you know, that was my idea to do modelling. I don't regret that for a second because you got to remember in the 2019 election, huge issue is what's the cost of your climate policy?

What's the cost of your climate policy that Scott Morrison exploited and we tried to say, well, the cost of inaction is great in the cost of action, but it didn't work. My view was, we needed to point to specific policies and specific modelling. We did that.

The modelling was independent. We released it, and again, I think the Australian people cast judgement all that in 2025. Thanks again for joining us on a really busy news day.

Good on you. Thanks, Minister. Thanks, guys.

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