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The Sustainable Hour no. 590 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Our guest in The Sustainable Hour no. 590 is ex-enviro radio host Joe Cicero who shares his insights around the recent Geelong refinery fire.
Episode 590 of The Sustainable Hour travels from Melbourne Town Hall to the Geelong refinery, from Swedish courtrooms to Australian democracy, asking difficult but necessary questions about fossil fuels, truth-telling, media influence and the future of energy in Australia.
Mik Aidt reflects on what it means when overwhelming public support for renewable energy and fairer taxation of fossil fuel exports is ignored by political leaders. Drawing on voices such as Conrad Benjamin from Punters Politics, Natalie Kyriacou and Gillian Triggs, the episode explores whether modern democracy has drifted too far from the original idea of ordinary citizens having genuine influence over decision-making.
• Why are governments still backing fossil fuel expansion when most Australians support renewable energy?
• Is Australia facing not only a climate crisis, but also a crisis of democracy and media integrity?
• How does misinformation shape public understanding of renewable energy projects?
• What can we learn from ancient Greek democracy?
The episode also highlights how misleading narratives around clean energy continue to spread through mainstream media. Climate communicator Mitch Pope challenges exaggerated claims on 7 News about land use for renewables and misinformation about EV batteries, while Frackman points to the quiet majority in regional Australia who support renewable energy projects because of the jobs and economic stability they bring.
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Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook
Colin Mockett OAM reports on a landmark legal development in Sweden where a court partly accepted the “1,000-tonne rule” – the idea that for every 1,000 tonnes of fossil carbon burned, one human life is prematurely lost due to climate impacts.
Colin also explores what the Swedish court case could mean for new Australian gas projects and fuel storage plans, including the emissions implications of the proposed Ottway Basin gas field. He reflects on the hidden human toll of military emissions and reports on deadly floods and extreme weather events across Asia.
The Global Outlook examines how Africa’s rainforests are now shifting from carbon sinks to carbon emitters, India’s escalating heat crisis, Australia’s heavy dependence on diesel, and the rapid rise of electric freight transport. Finally, Colin highlights the historic decision by the United Kingdom to become the first major economy to stop issuing new oil and gas exploration licences. Colin argues that fossil fuel emissions should no longer be discussed as abstract statistics, but as direct human consequences.
. . .
Special guest: Joe Cicero on the Geelong refinery fire
Former Enviro Talk host Joe Cicero joins the program for an in-depth discussion about the recent refinery fire in Geelong, refinery safety, fuel dependence, and Australia’s difficult energy transition. Drawing on decades of experience monitoring refinery oaperations and environmental impacts in Geelong, Joe offers insights into the complexity and risks of ageing refinery infrastructure.
Topics discussed include:
• What may have caused the refinery fire and explosion at Viva Energy’s refinery
• The role of hydrofluoric acid in alkylation processes
• Concerns about transparency and public trust
• Australia’s dependence on imported fuel
• Why refinery shutdowns matter for national fuel supply
• The challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels while maintaining energy reliability
• Political leadership and the absence of a coherent transition strategy
Mik and Joe also debate the pace of electrification, the role of government leadership, and how societies can navigate the shift away from fossil fuels without creating further instability.
. . .
Ttuth-telling, positivy and community
The episode closes with our brief reflections on truth-telling, climate communication and the importance of staying optimistic in difficult times. We discuss the real human costs of fossil fuel use, the silence around the proposed gas hub in Corio, and why positivity and honesty remain essential tools for change.
As always, The Sustainable Hour encourages listeners not only to stay informed, but to “be the difference”, and be connected.
We round off the Hour with our song, ‘I Heard It on The Sustainable Hour’. You can find it here.
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SOURCES AND REFERENCES
• Democracy conference speeches featuring Gillian Triggs and Natalie Kyriacou, among others:
www.youtube.com/live/gOTvq6lgMgo
• The “1,000-tonne rule” climate mortality research:
www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(26)00006-9/fulltext
www.phys.org/news/2026-03-climate-action-million-premature-deaths.html
www.phys.org/news/2025-08-oil-gas-air-pollution-linked.html
• YouGov polling on Australians prioritising renewable energy:
www.climatecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Budget-Energy-Priorities-Poll_May-2026.pdf
• Mitch Pope response to Channel 7 renewable energy claims:
www.facebook.com/share/r/1B8Z6DLQiz
• Frackman Project commentary on clean energy zones:
www.facebook.com/frackman
. . .
“I hope that what unfolds with some of the investigations that are going to take place, that it’s going to be open and transparent and the people, the community is going to hopefully be able to build trust again in the refinery, the management and just the larger operation, when we look at Viva Refinery in Australia.”
~ Joe Cicero, Ex-Enviro program host at 94.7 The Pulse community radio in Geelong
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 590
Andrew Forrest, executive chairman of mining company Fortescue, in a Smart Energy Council youtube-video:
C’mon, Australia! We can do better than this!
Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, on youtube:
Energy is the antidote to fossil fuel chaos.
Tony Gleeson:
We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded. Whilst living on and nurturing both their land and the communities for millennia, before their land was stolen,The Wadawurrung people acquired a great amount of ancient wisdom. The same wisdom that we’re going to need access to to survive the climate crisis that we’re facing.
Conrad Benjamin, Facebook video reel:
So I think what politicians fail to understand, their failure is what we want: Don’t give gas away for free. Business 101, economics 101, capital, 56 per cent of the gas has been given away for free. I can cite every independent economist I can. You can cite the gas lobby. Choose who we want to believe. What we see is a class of politician that will choose to trust a lobbyist over what we are asking them to do. And when we see that… We see our democracy isn’t working because we have overwhelming majority for this thing. You can disagree if you want. When government fails to do it, that burns the fabric of democracy and you can end in some bad places when people lose faith in their democracy.
Mik Aidt:
This is a video clip by Conrad Benjamin, probably better known as “Punters’ Politics”, videos that are out on Instagram and on Facebook. And I think he’s right. What’s wrong with our democracy when 80 per cent of Australians agree that we deserve a better return from the sale of our coal and gas exports? 87 per cent! And yet the government just ignores it. How is that democracy?
62 per cent of the Australian voters think that the government should prioritize investing in renewable sources of energy over fossil fuels in its future energy plan. That’s according to a recent polling from YouGov. 62 per cent of Australians, again a majority. And in a well-functioning democracy, you’d assume that obviously when we have a majority in the population that wants something, the government would listen and take action accordingly.
That’s not what’s happening. The Labour government has chosen to stand up for the fossil fuel industry, the vested interests, exactly like the coalition government did it before them. hello, Mr. Albanese, I can tell you, security, real security, is not in spending $10 billion on more oil tanks for securing more petrol. Real security would be to help Australians become less dependent on oil and petrol altogether. And if you do the maths, imagine what you could do with 10 billion dollars if you wanted to get Australians off the fossil fuels. As one example, it would mean that you could reduce the price of one million electric vehicles with a subsidy of $10,000 each. And I think quite a few Australians would be quick to pick up an electric car that doesn’t pollute, that doesn’t harm your health, and doesn’t cost money when you charge it and would even get a $10.000 dollar rebate. But now, let’s spend it on piling up more petrol and oil reserves.
Gillian Triggs, speaking at the 9 May 2026 Melbourne Town Hall event Reclaiming Democracy Together:
Democracy and the rule of law are under threat globally and in Australia. We see a fragmentation of political parties and a drift to extreme right and left views, leaving a vacuum in the sensible middle. Our meeting today is a valuable step to finding principled and pragmatic solutions that can reinvigorate our commitment to democracy and to the law both within Australia and internationally. Thank you.
Natalie Kyriacou, speaking at the 9 May 2026 Melbourne Town Hall event Reclaiming Democracy Together:
Too many of us have become complacent. We have allowed freedoms to be chipped away bit by bit. We have seen truth distorted. We have watched as the right to protest is eroded, as wealth, information and power concentrate into fewer and fewer hands. Too many of us have stood by while others suffered, reassuring ourselves with the most dangerous sentence of them all. “At least it’s not happening to me.” Too many of us are living through machines and screens while the real world, the one that actually holds our bodies and forests and rivers and our air, becomes something we pass through rather than belong to. And somewhere in this process, too many of us have lost part of ourselves, our courage, our empathy, our social intelligence, our connection to nature, to community, to reality. And in doing so, we have forgotten something very simple. This world is shared. No species survives alone and the greatest strength of a species is not singularity and dominance. It is diversity and ability to collaborate.
Mik:
2,000 people came together this Saturday in the Melbourne Town Hall to discuss what is wrong and how we can reclaim and restore this broken democracy here in Australia. And one thing I took with me is that this modern system that we call democracy, we think it’s something that came from the ancient Greek system, but that’s actually only partly true. What we actually inherited was an oligarchic version of governance, which was designed exactly, and this was back in the 1800s, designed exactly to make sure that the oligarchs, the people who had power and money, would not lose their power and money. The original democracy as it was practiced in Athens, in Greece, was based on randomly selected ordinary citizens who would make decisions. And why did they do it like that? Exactly to reduce the corrupting influence of people with wealth and status and power. Which is what is wrong with our democracy. Those people who’ve got the money are defining the rules and that is not democracy. So the Greeks understood this already 2,400 years ago, but we somehow forgot it. And we’re allowing the oligarchic version of “democracy” in quotation mark to run our society with the consequence, one of them the big one, that our climate is breaking down.
On Facebook, Frackman put up a video commentary, he formulated in this way.
Frackman Project, Facebook video clip:
What does the media keep on covering politicians who are yelling at solar panels instead of the consistent polling showing that only 17 per cent of people who live in clean energy zones oppose it? The majority of the people who live in these zones can see the value of jobs. The farmers are earning good money that doesn’t depend on the rain. It’s bringing wealth and jobs into their areas. But the outrage always gets the airtime because conflict obviously sells. We never hear of the quiet majority that support clean energy in the bush.
Mitch Pope, Facebook video clip:
Recently, “7 News Spotlight” made the claim that to meet our renewable energy needs, we’d to cover an area seven times the size of Tasmania in glass and steel. That’s a flat-out lie. The Australian National University actually calculated this. The amount of space we’d need to get to 100 per cent renewables is 0.02 per cent of the country’s total landmass, or 2 per cent of Tasmania’s landmass, to power the whole country. That area is about 1,200 square kilometres, which is basically if you went 35 kilometres that way, 35 kilometres that way, and made a square. That’s the amount of land we need. It’s not that much. And it’s definitely not seven Tasmanias worth.
So my question is, how can Channel 7 spread flat out lies without any consequences? They also lied when they said that every battery needed for EVs and storing clean energy will need to use blood cobalt from the Congo. They don’t. Most batteries made last year didn’t contain any cobalt. They claimed that koalas will be euthanised with blunt force to make way for renewable energy projects. This is also not true and has never actually happened. So Channel 7, Liam Bartlett, what’s up with the lies?
Mik:
That’s Mitch Pope, our local Instagram and social media influencer in the climate and environment space. And he points out, you know, that we obviously have in this country a media misinformation problem. And to do our bit here at 94.7 The Pulse to balance out that problem. Well, we have our own media news anchor here in The Sustainable Hour every week, Colin Mockett OAM who gives us a view out in the big world so we can understand and get a bit of a perspective on what’s ‘the storm in the glass of water’ – as we say in Denmark – that we have here in Australia. So over to you. It’s important Colin that we get the report that you have compiled for us for this week.
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Hello Mik, and thank you for this. Our roundup this week begins in Sweden, where for the first time anywhere, a court case has used what researchers call the “1,000-tonne rule.” That rule is a calculated estimate that for every 1,000 tonnes of fossil fuel carbon is burned, one human life is prematurely lost because of climate related causes.
Now these include heat waves, floods, bushfires, crop failures, disease, storms and other impacts. They are all intensified by global heating. Now to publicise this, a group of Extinction Rebellion activists in Sweden had blockaded an airport. Flights were disrupted for a day and according to the calculations around 8,000 tonnes of aviation emissions were avoided.
So their lawyer argued in court that the protest had effectively helped save eight human lives. And incredibly, the court partly accepted the reasoning. 15 activists were acquitted, two organisers received fines, but the principal had entered a courtroom for the first time.
For decades, fossil fuel pollution has always been discussed in terms of economics or future risk. But this Swedish argument reframed it in direct human terms. Emissions are not abstract. They cause death. The case may turn out to be one of those small legal moments that we look back on later and realize it marked the beginning of a much bigger impetus.
Now let’s give that finding a local perspective. A couple of weeks ago, the Victorian state government approved the Annie Gas field in the Ottway Basin. That’s off the coast of the Twelve Apostles along the Great Ocean Road. And that’s expected to supply up to 65 petajoules of gas. That’s more than a third of Victoria’s current annual gas use. It’ll begin about 2028.
Now, 65 petajoules of gas when it’s burned would release roughly 3.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Using the Swedish court’s 1,000-tonne rule, that translates to roughly 3,300 premature deaths. 3,300 people losing their lives because of the gas drilling off our coast.
And then there’s the federal government’s $10 billion fuel security package. The prime minister said it would establish a government-owned fuel reserve of around 1 billion litres, mainly diesel and aviation fuel, and lift Australia’s fuel stock holdings. 1 billion litres of fossil fuel, when burned, means somewhere around 2.5 to 2.7 million tonnes of CO2 which translated through the same 1,000-tonne rule, roughly comes between 2,500 and 2,700 premature deaths.
And two weeks ago on this program, Professor Joseph Camilleri told us that the world’s military contributes 18 per cent of all CO2 emissions. Using the Swedish formula again, that means they’re causing 6.45 million deaths annually. And that’s almost double the death rate of the Great War, 1914-18, World War I, which for four years had an annual death rate of 3.7 million people.
So what we’re actually doing at the moment is pouring… just the military alone – this is the world’s military, the world’s armies, air forces and navies – not at war, just in peacetime – killing people by the emissions that they’re putting into the sky.
Having said that, now I’ll do a quick weather roundup. There are two tropical cyclones and a typhoon that have caused heavy rainfall, widespread flooding and landslides in South and Southeast Asia last week. And that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,250 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. And many still are missing. Now all that was reported in the Al Jazeera newsroom. It’s not in Australia’s standard newsrooms, but it really cements down what the Swedish court was saying.
Then there was the news that Africa’s rainforests are now emitting carbon instead of storing it, contributing to climate change instead of preventing it. Since 2010, the three largest rainforest regions of the world, that’s the South American Amazon, Southeast Asia and Africa, have all shifted, underscoring the need for urgent action to save the world’s great natural climate stabilizers. That was from the Guardian newspaper in the UK. In India, they’re enduring an intensifying heat wave with central regions recording 42 to 44 degrees daily. It’s a heat crisis gripping major cities and rural areas alike. With the Indian Meteorological Department issuing alerts, officials confirmed that the heat index, which accounts for humidity, is reaching levels that pose health risks to millions of people.
Now back home Australia’s present oil crisis has highlighted the fragile global supply lines for oil, petrol refining, jet fuel, plastics and fertilizers. But none of that comes close to our world-beating addiction to diesel. Consumption of diesel per head is nearly double the US in Australia, and so far ahead of China, it doesn’t even compare. Our whole economy depends on diesel.
Now this is according to Macquarie University Finance lecturer, Lorraine de Mello, who published a column in the conversation this month saying that trucks that move our goods and food around, machinery used in farming and mining, and even backup generators all rely on diesel.
Then he said that the idea that Australia has to be reliant on fossil fuels for our transport and vital industries does not hold up to scrutiny. He pointed to the first electric truck that made the Sydney to Canberra return trip fully laden on a single charge and added that China’s road freight sector will soon be dominated by battery-powered trucks, and British research firm BMI forecast that electric trucks will account for 60 per cent of new sales next year. He also pointed to Fortescue Metals founder Andrew Forrest, who’s currently weaning the miners’ massive operations off of diesel with a solar power plan that is expected to cut around 1.5 billion in costs for his company annually.
And finally to the UK where to a media distracted by the local council elections results, the British government announced that it was the world’s largest economy to end new oil and gas exploration. The announcement was in the form of the government’s North Sea Future Plan in which it confirmed that no more licenses for oil and gas exploration will be issued by the British government. Speaking about that plan, Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director, Areeba Hamid, said, “Britain has just made history. Closing the door to new exploration marks the beginning of the end of oil and gas in this country. This is a major milestone”, he said.
Oil and gas production has driven both the climate and energy price crises, leaving us all paying through the nose while fossil fuel giants have pocketed billions. But the winds are changing. The future of Britain’s energy is and needs to be clean, stable, homegrown renewables, not expensive, volatile, climate-wrecking fossil fuels. If only our government media or our Australian media and our government would point out the true state of the world instead of just reporting scares and the raves of right-wingers. But having said that, that’s the end of our Global Report for this week.
. . .
Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
. . .
Mik:
Our guest today in The Sustainable Hour is someone who listeners who have been with us for a long time might remember because he was actually doing similar stuff as The Sustainable Hour has been doing for the last what 13 years or so. Joe Cicero was here long before. Is that right, Joe?
Joe:
That is absolutely correct. Good morning, Mik. It’s great to be with you here at 94.7 The Pulse and it brings back a bit of nostalgia for me thinking back of the Enviro Talk days that I used to present a very comparable program to what you and Tony and Colin are doing currently.
Mik:
So what was that like? And when was it? Was it back in the 1990s even?
Joe:
No, this would have been probably the period from the early 2000s until late 2010, just off the top of my head. I’d really need to look through my notes, but it ran for a, a comparable period of time to what your program has been running. I understand it’s some 13 years you mentioned. Wow. Yeah. And look, it was a great time. I mean, it was an opportunity to have a lot of guests coming in just the same as what you’re doing currently with Geelong industries, a lot of the statutory authorities. It was a really great time that everybody had an opportunity to come into the studio and have their say. And it wasn’t about, burning anyone at the stake or you bashing anybody. It was to give everybody an opportunity to have their say and the environment continues to be a very important topic in and around the Geelong area.
Mik:
So what got you interested in the first place – your interest in the environment?
Joe:
Well, look, it was a bit of a side thing in that I come from an engineering background, I guess, having worked in the airline industry and I was focused very heavily on certain aspects of engineering. And some of the people that knew me in the Geelong area, even though I worked out of Geelong, they said to me, ‘Hey, look, we’re having a couple of issues at the moment with some of the matters to do with the refinery here in Geelong. Could you help us out a little bit?’ And this is the way some of my interest started because I started investigating and researching refinery operations, even though it wasn’t my core thing. It was more electrical engineering, what I came from. That’s basically where it all started.
And I started collating information and data from refineries around the world. And at the time then the EPA here in Victoria, they were going through their trials and tribulations when it came to the regulatory authority controlling the refinery. And I guess, as time went by, you know, we realised that there was a need for what we were doing. And we started to do our own air monitoring here in the Geelong area. And that in itself was quite taxing because a chap that we had helping us at the time, he was a scientist, Chris Marsden. I remember he was a very knowledgeable man. And with some of the people that he had communication and contact with a company in the United States, Ocean Optics, they lent to us some air monitoring equipment. And that was, like, amazing for a community group to have that information and that equipment available to them.
Mik:
So, speaking of air quality, there was a big fire in that refinery just recently. So you were looking at that 20 years ago. What happened then?
Joe:
Well, look, mean, a lot of things have happened in the refinery, know, since 20 or more years ago, because historically it’s not just this refinery, know, refinery is a dangerous and a complex place. It’s a major hazard facility. And I wouldn’t say that this refinery is any different to many other refineries around the world. But unfortunately, we have to look at the age of this refinery and that comes into play. And this refinery has changed ownership going back around 2014.
Many refineries have changed ownership and in Australia we’ve ended up currently with two refineries and I guess this is the situation that we’re confronted with now that we’re needing the refinery as much as the refinery needs us and people have come to the realisation with what’s happened now as a consequence of the the war you know it started at the end of February that we’re very reliant on many different world factors and we’re isolated here in Australia in the bigger scheme of things.
So we have to continue to be respectful, I guess, to everybody. And that’s including the refinery, because the refinery is a big employer here in the Geelong area, employing from last figures that I remember, just over a thousand or so people. I mean, they are a large contributor to the Geelong area. So, you know, it has to be taken very carefully, you know, what people are saying and what people are doing. I know that there was a major event that took place there. But I mean, it’s early days.
Mik:
Certainly when you realise that our refinery here in Geelong has attention from the top of politics, because we had the prime minister visiting after the fire one night, which was about a month ago now. Suddenly, two days after we had the visit of the prime minister, he actually canceled part of his trip overseas to come back for this. So that’s how important that fire was and how important it was for everyone to say, it’s all good, nothing happened here.
Joe:
Absolutely, Mik. I mean, it was a huge event. It’s not an event, I don’t think, that the refinery or the authorities are proud of. And I just hope that what unfolds with some of the investigations that are going to take place, that it’s going to be open and transparent and the people, the community is going to hopefully be able to build trust again in the refinery, the management and just the larger operation, when we look at Viva Refinery in Australia.
Mik:
So with the knowledge that you have, what actually happened?
Joe:
Well, my understanding at this point here is having spoken to the authorities and several other people, the area south, is the area, guess, southern most of the refinery perimeter, it’s what is referred to as the MOGAS area. And in the MOGAS area, there’s a couple of critical pieces of plant, one being the catcracker, another piece which where the fire and the explosion occurred is the alkylation unit.
And they go hand in hand because even though it hasn’t been talked about that much, and there’s some confusion out in the media that a lot of people refer to what the refinery is producing when it comes to diesel, they’re jet fuel, they’re producing petrol, but the jet fuel that they’re producing is predominantly for large commercial airliners and the alkylation unit where the fire and the subsequent explosion occurred, that is very specific for producing what they refer to as the alkylates which they use for fuel which is the 95, 98 octane and the Avgas for smaller general aviation aircraft and unfortunately in Australia there is only two places that produce this and this was the Geelong refinery which is now shut down that part of it and the Brisbane refinery the Linton refinery and interestingly enough, they just finished doing a shutdown at the end of 2025 for their alkylation unit but from a logistics point of view and when you think about transporting fuels, it’s going to be a real problem when Victoria was a key player when it came to 95, 98 octane fuel and also the Avgas, whether these supplies of fuel now are going to be substituted by imports or whether there’s going to be the ability for the Brisbane refinery to send some of these down through road transport because I can’t imagine in my wildest dreams for the quantities that are used down in the eastern states that they would be put on a ship and then shipped down to the Geelong area.
So there’s a lot of things that are going to be occurring, Mik, when it comes to the fallout if you like from what’s occurred and some of the history that I’ve been looking at at other alkylation incidents around the world. One more recently I guess in the bigger scheme of things in Pennsylvania I believe in Philadelphia in 2019.
There was a major incident at a refinery there, which subsequently led to the closure of the refinery. And it was a similar thing. And the reasoning behind it, the report came out in 2022.
Mik:
So this happened at a time when there is a war going on and we’re seeing tension in the world because of things happening in the Middle East. And I was noticing in social media, it didn’t take long before various conspiracy theories started cropping up, you know: ‘This is the United Nations!’ I read someone saying, you know, as if it was actually somebody doing this. Do you think… Is there some merit to that this happened not just as an accident, but because of somebody’s doing?
Joe:
No, look, I really can’t believe any of this. I wouldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams that something could be orchestrated at such a bad timing for us considering our reliance on this refinery. Now, you know, the consequences… I understand, but you would have to sort of think that these people, if they are able to undertake such things of magnitude.
Mik:
According to the conspiracy theory…
Joe:
They must be doing a lot better than what we are because I can’t imagine that someone would be able to pinpoint a specific area of this refinery and do what they did. I just think it’s just circumstance, unfortunate circumstance that things occurred, how they occurred, when they occurred. And I know there’s a lot of people out there.
Mik:
But how does a fire start? The last place that you want a fire would be in a refinery, wouldn’t it?
Joe:
Absolutely, but unfortunately a refinery is a very complex and dangerous place. Essentially what you’re doing is you’re processing crude oil and when you’re starting to put crude oil under pressure in elevated temperatures, it becomes a very hazardous situation. And this situation, unfortunately came to bear the fire and the subsequent explosion there in this particular alkylation unit.
And the bad part of it is it’s not so much the fire and the explosion, it’s potentially the emission that’s taken place because one of the processes in this alkylation is this particular hydrofluoric acid. In short, it’s referred to as HF acid. It’s part of the catalyst that makes this process take place. And I understand there was a release of this product. And when we look historically at the Shell refinery and subsequently Viva refining, that they’ve been taken to task by the authorities more recently in 2019 for a release that took place. They were taken to the court and fined. I can’t remember exactly the amount, something in the order of a hundred or so thousand dollars for the incident that occurred and for also not reporting it to the authorities.
So this is an unfortunate event because there was some trust lost. And the expectation was that the mechanism that is here now currently with the authorities is it’s self-reporting that the company is expected to be forthcoming when something occurs that they will tell the authorities, ‘Hey, look, something occurred recently and we need to let you guys know about it and you know get involved in the investigation that take place,’ and this wasn’t the case.
Mik:
So where’s your trust right now?
Joe:
Look, it’s hanging in the wind because my concern, guess, Mik, is that there’s been a lot of discussion. And just recently, I believe the refinery has formally been handed back to Viva up until that point from when the incident occurred. It was under the control of fire rescue Victoria and emergency Victoria. And the decision was made that the refinery is now ‘safe’ in inverted commas.
And Viva now will be able to get in there and investigate. But my concern, I guess, is as far as where my trust sits with them. I don’t know how very short into the incident occurring, Fire Rescue Victoria was able to make certain statements, which I would never put myself in a situation of making that the cause of the incident was mechanical failure. I think it was very premature and this was reported in a number of media outlets that Fire Rescue Victoria’s opinion was the fire and the explosion that occurred was a consequence of mechanical failure.
I think it’s very premature for anybody to be making any of these statements. And I’d like to know, is there any data to back that up? And I understand that the site was unsafe. know, they needed to establish a safety envelope, if you like, prior to any personnel going into that area that was affected. But you would think that there still would have been the opportunity considering we’re living in 2026, we’ve got drones, we’ve got other equipment that we can send into an area that could be hazardous, so that you can assess the extent of the damage because the refinery is a very complex area and you have to wonder what other piping or what other pieces of equipment and plant may have been impacted or affected by this.
Mik:
And how about the humans? How were they affected? Did anybody inhale this? You talk about some toxic fumes?
Joe:
Well, the, the fortune or the good fortune also was the atmospheric conditions on the night. And we, you know, if we take it back somewhat to the 15th of April and it occurred for my information that I’ve got available to me at about three minutes past 11 was the start of the incident. And then there was a subsequent quite large explosion, some 20 or so minutes after that. the prevailing winds at the time, they were such that it went in the direction of the base.
So would have gone away from the residents, even though the closest residents and some that I’ve spoken to recently, as the crow flies, they’re approximately 500 meters away from the refinery boundary on the west side, if you like. And they’re the people that have got the most concern because even though the plume was not going in the direction of the residents, the ferocity of the fire and the explosion was actually very very alarming you know and this is why the people are anxious.
Mik:
And they want to expand with, as I understand it, a gas hub.
Joe:
Well, look, there is going to be the, the view to expand and I can understand the reasoning behind it because there are certain plans in place for expansion. some of them being that they need to introduce because of required legislation, desulphurisation of unleaded petrol. So this is another piece of plant that is, in train that they’re investigating at the moment. They’re looking at putting in three, 30 million litre diesel tanks.
So the view going forward is that regardless of how well the refinery here operates, they’ve got to look at the bigger picture and they can’t produce what Victoria or what Australia requires. So it’s going to be a situation of importing more diesel into Australia. Hence the need to store it because the ships normally are going to be coming from Asia and they come at a snail’s pace in the biggest scheme of things.
And the ship takes as long as it needs to take to get from be it Malaysia, be it Singapore, be it Korea, be it Japan, some of the countries that the government recently visited. So I would say that all going well, you know, we’re going to continue to have established relationships with those countries, but it’s not that the government of the country in Australia in this case does the deal. It’s going to be more Viva – because Viva and it’s holding company Vital, they’re the people that end up doing the deals. They’re the ones that are doing the negotiation longer term, and we want to be assured that we’re going to continue to have fuel supply because a country such as ours, and even worse so, I guess, New Zealand, they’re very reliant on fuel, you know, considering the remoteness of the countries relative to the rest of the world when you look at Asia and the Middle East. And without fuel, it would be very problematic for us because the average person here in Australia on a given day, we’re probably using who knows five or 10 times more fuel on a per capita basis than what the average person perhaps in the Philippines, in Vietnam, in Cambodia might be using.
So we have to be mindful too, as a Western country, are we able to continue this lifestyle that we’ve now chosen to live? There’s many factors, you know, I believe that we need to consider, Mik, when it comes to our sustainability. And I guess this leads into some of what you’re doing.
Mik:
Joe, I was going to say, you’ve been a host of a program, an environmental program, and here you’re sitting actually telling us, we need something that totally wrecks the climate and we have the consequences from that, which is flooding, bushfires… You know, the summer we just had was really scary, even here in Geelong, with bushfires cropping up here, there, everywhere and whole towns burned down. How do you think people feel out there hearing you defending the burning of petrol, the production of petrol and then the burning of it, which is the reason that the climate is getting more more aggressive on us? And we’re seeing costs from that. We’re seeing insurance premiums going up, and the rest of it. So the price for the climate crisis is paid by ordinary people like you and me, whereas, you know, the people who are profiting from what’s going on, including all the sales of fossil fuels, are just pocketing that profit. I’m not seeing any benefit from that.
Joe:
Well, it is an unfortunate situation, but the reality is I would like to see a transition and I hope down the track we continue to have an opportunity to talk about other elements in the bigger picture when we look at, you know, going to electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, more efficient means of transport. But the reality is when we look at overall at our country, how it’s situated, how it’s positioned and the lifestyle that people have, how spread out we are when we just look at Geelong as a case in point on the number of kilometres that people travel to go from their workplace sometimes to their home and it could be all the way down to the surf coast, it could be in the other direction up to Little River to Inverleigh to Lethbridge. It is just the dynamics of our lifestyle and until we accept change broadly, we are reliant on the fossil fuels and we’re not at that point now.
Mik:
Leaders and in particular our prime minister Albanese, I’m looking at the prime minister and thinking: He came to Geelong and he was speaking out there at the refinery about these heroes who now had the fire was under control, and ‘petrol is so important for our country,’ and so on. Instead, he could have said, ‘That’s bad – you have an old refinery here. Sorry about what happened here, but you know what? It’s going to close anyway because we need to get the electric vehicles out there in society as fast as we possibly can, because we have a climate crisis. That’s what I would have liked to see from the prime minister. He could have done it softly. He could have said something not as sharp as I said here, but he could have mentioned that, ‘By the way, we need to get off petrol. We don’t have to put it up on the pedestal as something important for us.’
Joe:
Look, I think it’s nice to think that, you know, but the reality is when you look at someone like the prime minister, he’s walking a tightrope and they’re influenced by many, different people, different lobby groups. And at the moment I come back to the point that I made earlier on that we are not at a stage, I think, where we can transition because I look at things in a very broad sense. And I think one day, if we are capable of moving away from fossil fuels, the transition to the alternative energy, which we don’t have enough of, namely electricity. We don’t have the means at the moment to actually be able to plug people in, have their cars charged, run their homes, run their industries.
And I mean, I’ve been looking at this since, you know, I was doing the Enviro Talk program many, many years ago and I was involved with the Alcoa Group. I was the chairman of their community consultation group. And I said to them at the time when the intention was to basically wind up operations and cease smelting here in the Point Henry region, wouldn’t it be beneficial to somehow continue with the power that you would be ordinarily using? It was a lot of electricity so that we can transition across to the clean and green state that we need to get to. But the problem was there was other powers at play that were looking at shutting down the coal fired power stations at the same time.
And this was the underlying issue. We didn’t have a transition plan in place. And I’m not saying that it should be, or it could be, you know, a nuclear future, but there’s got to be some sort of a sustainable way to produce electricity prior to us saying we’re going to shut the fossil fuel industry down because we can’t be riding around in bicycles. That would not work for us. We’re just not a society here that can gear up to the way some of our Asian partners are when I made reference to Cambodia, Vietnam, maybe Philippines, other places that are able to sustainably run their life on bicycles and mopeds that would not work for us here.
Mik:
I think where we agree is that yes, we need an orderly transition. That is really the optimal. That is the ideal. Because if we don’t have an orderly transition, we’ll have a messy one. Either way, we’ll have a transition. And the messy one doesn’t look pretty. Because there will be all the disruption from the climate, which destroys our infrastructure and people get more and more in trouble economically. And then on top of that, you have some people who can afford, for instance, EVs, and then you will have a lot of people who can’t. What I’m asking for is a government that takes responsibility and says, OK, listen, folks, we are going to now create that transition. That’s what’s happened in Denmark. About five years ago, I was really annoyed with the Danes because it didn’t seem to me much was happening. It was all talk, talk, talk. Then they started pushing for what they call The Green Transition. They didn’t talk really much about climate at the time. They talked about The Green Transition. And that was from an economical point of view, because electricity would get cheaper. It simply is healthier, cheaper and better to run your society on electricity from clean energy sources. So that logic, that logic, the leaders in the country began to promote that. And the journalists in the media went with them, so the story in society changed. And that can begin with that it is our leaders doing it.
Joe:
I agree that it has to come from the top when it comes to leadership. You mentioned the Prime Minister visiting the refinery and you look historically how many Prime Ministers have visited the Shell and subsequently Viva refinery and it’s only at certain times when there’s something, a photo opportunity, a crisis. It’s a bit like politicians going into hospitals and cuddling newborn babies. It’s that sort of a scenario.
And you think to yourself, there’s got to be something in it, especially when our Prime Minister was half a world away, you know, in Asia trying to butter up some of our neighbouring countries that we purchase fuels from and then all of a sudden we have this incident that occurs here and he flies back and hasn’t finished his task in Asia and he’s doing a photo opportunity there because the Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, it’s his electorate essentially, you know, it’s under his watch where it’s happening.
And he is not the person, you know, to speak to the media. We have to get the head honcho in there to do the work. And I think to myself… Even subsequently had Jacinta Allen come in there… And I thought to myself, this is a big deal! You know, they’re trying to actually quell the anxiety from the community as to what’s occurred because it’s not normal that something like this occurs because there’s been major fires there with a crude distiller units with the catalytic cracker unit, furnace fires has been unfortunately going back you know to 1961 even fatalities so there’s quite a history there and I can understand you know that people are very anxious about living close to it even though people have come and gone for a variety of reasons people live around the rim of the refinery there and it is just circumstance that people would ordinarily want to live somewhere else but they can’t you know they have to be there so I think to myself what do you do in this situation. It’s a very tricky one and I hope that somehow there’s…
Mik:
What’s your own answer? And are you anxious?
Joe:
Well, look, somewhat I’m anxious in the, in respect to, what is going to be occurring as the next thing, because I believe my personal opinion, what occurred, as far as this alkylation plant, I don’t see that it’s going to be repaired. It’s not going to be, up and running ever again. It’s just a fact, you know, that the cost of replacing it and the timelines, when I look at the fire that took place in the crude distiller going back in the early, I think, 1980ies.
It took them 10 years nearly by the time they were able to rebuild that. And that is one of the key cornerstones of a refinery to have a crude distillation unit. And they’ve got various ones there, including the catcracker. So I think to myself, what is going to happen in the near future? Is this going to affect the viability of the refinery longer term? Because it’s always a commercial question as to whether a refinery continues. know, again, going back to around 2014, about the time when the Shell refinery was sold to Viva Energy, there was a white paper that was released by the Australian government.
And this is one of the key drivers why we lost the refineries that we had. We were eight refineries and we went down to two. So our need to have these refineries continue is very, very focused at the moment because of the refinery condition, the state of the refineries and the war in the Middle East, because people are starting to realise price of fuel is just skyrocketed and it’s a very important thing for us we can’t do without it and the supply and the demand is a big thing in people’s lives.
Mik:
Thank you, Joe, for enlightening our listeners about what’s, I think, is really going on underneath the surface when we talk about the refinery and when we talk about our use of petrol in our cars and so on. Would you like to come back? I was thinking maybe the refinery people, Viva Energy, are actually listening to this and maybe they would have some comments and it would be good to have a proper talk with them in the studio as well.
Joe:
Absolutely, Mik, and this is what my intention was today was just a lead-in to hopefully to the bigger picture and I would like to Invite Viva energy and some of their key staff perhaps Bill Patterson. I would like to invite EPA I would like to invite work safe and any other authority that’s going to add to the discussion because at the end of the day It’s not about pointing fingers or about bashing anyone. It’s getting to the facts, the truth, and how to make Geelong better and stronger when it comes to environment and sustainability.
Mik:
And doing it together.
Joe:
Well, that’s what we like to do because it is about communication. And from some of the people that I’ve spoken to at this point here in regard to the incident and leading up to it, they felt that the communication was lacking and they would like to know to be better informed about what is happening in their surroundings.
Mik:
Well, there you go, that’s what we have The Sustainable Hour for.
Joe:
That’s great, Mik, and look I look forward to speaking to you and your colleagues here further about this into the future.
. . .
Jingle
Mik:
This will be all we could fit into this particular Sustainable Hour, number 590. But we are, of course, back next week and ongoingly, and we will soon, I hope, be talking more about the Geelong refinery, about gas, petrol, and fossil fuels. And even as you were talking about, fossil deaths, the 1,000-tonne rule that defines that for every 1,000 ton of fossil carbon burned, one human life is going to be prematurely lost.
Colin:
We saw almost the other end of it when our refinery caught fire, what, three weeks ago now. We avoided deaths at the refinery but didn’t think that just the fumes that coming out of the place are killing people anyway.
Mik:
And as we heard, the wind direction meant that the toxic fumes from the fire went out over the bay and not into the city where we, you know, thousands of people are living.
Tony:
That’s the true cost of using fossil fuels. It’s not something that’s imaginary, like they’re real human beings with real human loved ones whose lives are disrupted. And that’s happened. You just referred earlier Colin to thousands of people in Asia that had died as a result of extreme weather events fuelled by fossil fuels.
Colin:
Yep. And just to add, nobody at the moment is talking about our refinery which had its fire. Nobody’s talking about that’s the place where they wanted to put a floating gas hub. And you still see the signs around Geelong saying ‘no gas hub in Corio’. The pro gas storage people have gone remarkably quiet at the moment.
My ending for this week’s show might begin: let’s be strident in telling everybody the real truth.
Tony:
Yeah, truth telling is very much in our DNA.
Mik:
Absolutely Colin, don’t be conned. Be smarter than that! And also if I could squeeze in, I mean… Be positive! There’s so much anger and so many lies and deception in the air. But I think the way to beat that is to be positive and honest and willing to explain.
Tony:
That’s why I will be back next week.
. . .
SONG:
‘I Heard It on The Sustainable Hour’
[Verse 1]
I woke up feeling like the world’s on fire,
Storms are rising, rivers running drier.
But then I tuned in, turned the dial,
And found a reason to stay inspired.
[Pre-Chorus]
They said, “The greatest threat is thinking someone else will do it.”
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[Chorus]
I heard it on The Sustainable Hour –
Hope’s alive, and the time is now.
Stand up, speak out, let’s build our power,
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[Verse 2]
They talk of profits, pipelines, and delay,
But we’ve got voices that won’t fade away.
From city streets to the coastal sand,
We’re backing leaders who take a stand.
[Pre-Chorus]
They said, “A society grows great when we plant trees in whose shade we may never sit.”
So let’s rise up, this is it.
[Chorus]
I heard it on The Sustainable Hour –
Hope’s alive, and the time is now.
Stand up, speak out, let’s build our power,
Be the difference – we know how.
[Bridge – “I” to “We”]
We are the voices, we are the wave,
Lifting each other, brave and unafraid.
It’s not too late, don’t wait for someday,
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[Final Chorus – Empowerment Mode]
We heard it on The Sustainable Hour –
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Rise up, reach out, this is our power,
Be the difference – we know how!
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