A LOOMING CRISIS BUT WHO IN CANBERRA CARES?

By Alan Jones

While political parties and journalists seem fixated on Newspolls and who is going to win the contest next year between two major parties when the bulk of Australia want neither – let’s face it, the polls today tell us 36 percent of voters want the Coalition, it means 64 percent don’t; 38 percent want labor, 62 percent don’t.

But all this nonsense prompts the question, who in Canberra has their head around the real issues?

Almost everything that grows the economy, on any given day, relies on trucking.

Diesel trucks are described as the lifeblood of Australia; almost everything we buy spends some time on the road; yet we’re told trucking networks could grind to a halt within a matter of weeks.

There’s a looming shortage of an important chemical used to remove pollution from the exhaust of diesel trucks.

It is called AdBlue, which is an anti-pollution additive used in modern diesel vehicles. Simply, without it, trucks can’t start let alone run.

But here we go again.

The chemical that goes into making AdBlue, urea, is imported from China.

That supply has dried up.

There appears to be no hidden agenda here.

The cost of fertilizer in China has gone up and a large portion of that is urea. Reportedly, China don’t want to export any Urea in order to keep the price of local fertilizer down.

So if we can’t come up with a new supply of Urea, and, therefore, AdBlue, we are facing a crisis. The whole country will be impacted.

One transport company reportedly has 250 prime movers. They buy their fuel in bulk; they’re out of AdBlue next week.

Where is the Morrison government?

What happens if stock isn’t delivered to supermarkets? Or tractors can’t harvest? Or hospitals don’t have backup generators?

Who is telling us how we increase the manufacture of AdBlue in this country?

As I understand it, if we can’t source extra urea to make AdBlue we are literally, not metaphorically, up the creek.

And if the supply trickles in, you know what happens when a product is in short supply, the price goes up.

How does this then affect everything?

The reality is urea is in dangerously low supply around the world.

Some bulk users have stock in reserve.

China has turned off the tap and serious action is needed urgently to determine an alternative source of urea from overseas; but, then, most countries are in a similar situation to us.

How then can it be that South Korea, to name but one country, is facing a similar crisis because this is where all this environmental stuff about carbon dioxide kicks in.

In South Korea, there are environmental regulations stipulating that manufacturers use urea or face penalties; but we then learn that last month, South Korea, flew a military oil tanker to Australia to airlift 27,000 litres of urea solution because there was a dire shortage threatening to stall commercial transport and industries in South Korea.

Wouldn’t you think that makes us dumb? I note that the Managing director of Shaws Darwin Transport, Allan Thornley, has said today that he had talked to his supplier of AdBlue, “and he’s already canvassed right through Europe and everywhere and can’t find any… we need a joint effort between Federal Government and industry leaders to sit down and figure out what we’re going to do”.

But Scott Morrison was at Mount Panorama at the weekend; Anthony Albanese was tying himself in knots trying to make us believe that his climate change policy would create 604,000 new jobs; yet from neither of them is there a syllable about this looming crisis.

When do these so-called political leaders, if ever, deal with the things that really matter to Australians?

You have to wonder whether they even know this crisis is looming.

 

Urea is a colourless crystalline compound which is the main nitrogenous breakdown product of protein metabolism in mammals and is excreted in urine.