Topics: Andrew Hastie comments, Iran war, Fuel shortages

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PETE STEFANOVIC: Well, let's go back to Canberra now. Joining us live is the Liberal Senator Dave Sharma for his thoughts on this and a whole lot more. Dave, good to see you this morning. So, do you agree with your colleague Andrew Hastie that the war with Iran was a miscalculation by the White House?

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DAVE SHARMA: I honestly think it's too early to make those sorts of judgments, Pete. And I'd say two things. Firstly, I guess I have a role as a commentator or an analyst because of my time and expertise in the Middle East, but I've also got a role as a I'm a parliamentarian, and as a parliamentarian and a member of the Liberal Party, I'm a strong supporter of the US alliance. And I think we should be clear with that, with our diplomatic and political positioning. And I think we have been. But the other thing I'd say is you can't make judgments about the outcome of a conflict in the midst of that conflict. We're going to have to see how this lands. Yes. Have I had concerns about how elements of the operation are proceeding? Yes. But I think that's inevitable in any conflict or war. And I think it's important if you're, if you're true to a sense of judgment that you need to reserve some of your opinions until after the conflict is over.

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PETE STEFANOVIC: Well, as a poll shows, most Australians believe Donald Trump is at fault here. Have the consequences of this war outweighed the benefit?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, again, look, firstly, I'd say two things. Donald Trump is an exceptionally unpopular president in Australia, and there's no point trying to explain that otherwise. And I think that opinion of Donald Trump influences people's opinion of his policies. And that's fair enough. I don't discount or disagree with that, but that's the context we're dealing with now. Have the consequences outweighed the benefits? Well, again, we need to say yes, we've had a shock to oil prices, but it's not necessarily an enduring shock. It depends on how quickly the conflict is resolved, how quickly the Straits of Hormuz is reopened. And we do need to remember that the economy today is less oil dependent than it was 50 years ago in the 1970s. So although we have a manual from the oil shocks of the 1970s, it's not necessarily the manual that will be followed with this particular shock. So, I don't think we need to take it seriously. I think we need to be putting in place measures to respond to this, which is why we proposed a cut to the fuel excise as the Liberals and the Coalition. But we can't necessarily say what happened in the 1970s is going to happen.

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PETE STEFANOVIC: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I ask these questions because, I mean, there's no doubt that the Americans are winning this war militarily. They are destroying the forward infrastructure of the Iranians. But I guess I feel as though the response from Iran has been underestimated. Would you agree with that point?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, I would say that the Iranian governing and military structures and their ability to continue to fire missiles and drones and projectiles has proven more resilient than people expected at the start of this conflict. But your first point is important. I mean, at the end of this, Iran's ability to do what it has been doing for the last 30 years, which is support terrorist groups abroad, threaten its neighbours, sow instability, and basically behave as if it wants to be the regional hegemonic power, is going to be vastly diminished regardless of who's running that country now. I think you need to put that in the positive column It doesn't mean that it won't be matched by negatives or outweighed, but we need to recognize that the degradation of Iran's military nuclear ballistic missile and warfighting capabilities, which has already happened, is a positive in and of itself.

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PETE STEFANOVIC: Yeah, but they'll just build it all back up again, won't they?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, I mean, I'm sure depending on who's in power, they might seek to. But you've got to remember, I mean, this has been an immensely expensive program. They have funnelled resources from education, from health, from welfare, from basic infrastructure, essential services to fund what has been a pet project of groups like the IRGC, the Quds Force, an ideologically determined group that wants to seize the assets of the state to foment war abroad. Now, that's not a goal that the people more broadly share. It's been expensive and it's taken them several decades. So to think they can just turn a key and restore it overnight, I don't think is plausible. And I think they will have significant public issues to deal with as well.

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PETE STEFANOVIC: It sure would take a bit of time, and no doubt the Israelis and the Americans will keep watching anyway. Just closer to home, Dave, our fuel security has once again been exposed here. This is the third major economic shock that we've suffered in less than a decade. We have to prepare for the future now because China, for example, can very easily plan to cut off our oil supply if it plans on any move on Taiwan. As a moderate. Are you hardening at all around the establishment of more local oil refineries, possibly even drilling for oil?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I think we need to improve our fuel security and our fuel resilience. And I would say that, when we were last in government, we were the ones that passed the Fuel Security Act that established the legislative mechanism for a minimum stockholding obligation, the idea of reserves that provided the policy framework to save the two refineries we've still got. Yeah, we need to build on that. I think it's having only roughly 30 days of liquid fuel supplies in the sort of geopolitical and geostrategic environment we live in is no longer good enough. If you look back at what's changed over the last 5 years, we've had a war running in the Middle East for about 2.5 years and we've had a war running in Europe for about 5 years, all of them involving great powers. That tells us that our environment's changed and that the certainties we might have been able to rely on, including supply chains in the first decade of the 2000s, we can no longer use as our basis today.

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PETE STEFANOVIC: Yeah, I mean, the problem was there wasn't a business case to keep more oil refineries onshore, right? So how do you do that going forward? I know Barnaby wants to at least get to 4 refineries again. Is that possible? Can we afford that?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, I think all of these things are possible, but yes, they will cost money. I mean, the truth is it costs more. It costs more to operate and build a refinery in Australia than it does in Singapore. For instance, and to hold stocks also costs money. You need the storage, the maintenance, the supply networks and everything else. Well, yeah, I think it's a price worth paying. I mean, you take out insurance against all sorts of risks and insurance costs money versus the alternative, but you do it for a good reason. I think this is a sort of an area where we need to be spending more on insurance.

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PETE STEFANOVIC: Okay, good to see you, Dave Sharma there, the Liberal Senator, joining us live on this Monday morning.

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[ENDS]