Australia’s Refining Surrender: What We Gave Up for “Business Decisions”

    Australia could refine every barrel of oil we pump from the ground and meet roughly 30% of our national fuel needs right here at home. That single move would support around 10,000 full-time jobs across direct refinery roles, supply chains, trucking, contractors, and the ripple of local spending - cafes, pubs, retail, and community services in places like Geelong and Brisbane. Most importantly, it would ease the constant pressure of our dangerously thin fuel reserves. Right now, as tensions flare in the Middle East, Australia is sitting on just 26–36 days of petrol and diesel buffer that leaves us one shipping delay or geopolitical shock away from real shortages.

Yet we walked away from all of it.

    We once had eight refineries. Today only two remain. The others were shut not because the government literally padlocked the gates, but because owners declared them “uncommercial.” The same story played out with our car manufacturers - Holden, Toyota, Ford - and countless other industries. On paper, these were pure business decisions driven by global competition and small-scale economics. In reality, they masked a deeper structural failure: the dominance of trade unions that relentlessly pushed wages and conditions to levels that made Australian production uncompetitive against giant Asian mega-refineries running on far lower labour costs.

    When union power drives salaries sky-high, every litre of fuel, every car, every manufactured good becomes more expensive to produce here than to import. The price gap widens, margins collapse, and “business decisions” to close plants become inevitable. Meanwhile, the broader economy loses high-value, skilled jobs that once anchored regional communities. We export our crude and condensate, import finished petrol and diesel, and accept the vulnerability that comes with it.

    The uncomfortable truth is that successive governments - especially Labor, with its deep and longstanding ties to the union movement - bear real responsibility. They didn’t force the closures, but they created and protected the environment where union influence could flourish unchecked. Union bosses have long been accused of prioritising their own empires: inflating pay packets, installing mates in comfortable roles, and sometimes blurring lines with questionable networks. Whether it’s organised crime links or bikie influence in certain sectors, the pattern is familiar - power concentrated in the hands of a few at the expense of national resilience.

    The result? We surrendered energy security. We now scramble to release emergency stocks and relax fuel-quality rules just to keep the lights on and trucks moving. We rely on foreign refineries and foreign tankers for the vast majority of our supply. And while politicians talk about “fuel security,” the hard numbers show we’re still the only IEA member that can’t meet even downgraded reserve targets.

    We could have kept more refineries open, expanded capacity to process our own 398,000 barrels per day, and built a genuine buffer against shocks. Instead, short-term commercial logic - enabled by decades of union-driven cost blowouts and political reluctance to confront them - won the day. The car industry went the same way. Manufacturing hollowed out. Now fuel security hangs by a thread measured in weeks, not months.

    This wasn’t inevitable. It was a choice. And while the keys to the old refinery gates weren’t turned by government decree, the blame for handing over our self-reliance sits squarely at their feet. It’s time Australians demanded better: policies that put national resilience and real jobs ahead of ideology and entrenched interests. Because running on 30 days of fuel and imported dependence is no way to run a country.