Boring Leadership Is Exactly What Australia Needs Right Now
I’ve been following the Hormuz situation pretty closely over the past few weeks, and honestly, the more I read about it, the more I find myself thinking about leadership — specifically what good leadership actually looks like when things get genuinely difficult.
The news that Japan is going to maintain normal fuel supply to Australia, and that Prime Minister Takaichi is potentially visiting, is quietly significant. It doesn’t have the drama of a military announcement or the viral punch of a political brawl, but it matters. A lot. And the way it came together — through methodical diplomatic legwork with Japan, South Korea, and Singapore — is the kind of thing that rarely gets the credit it deserves because it doesn’t make for exciting television.
Here’s the thing a lot of people don’t realise about our fuel situation: we’re not actually importing crude oil at any meaningful scale. We have two refineries, one of which is, by most accounts, barely worth mentioning. What we import is already-refined fuel, mostly from Singapore, Malaysia, and the US. So the Strait of Hormuz being blocked doesn’t hit us directly the way it hits countries that are pulling crude through there — but it absolutely hits us indirectly, because it squeezes the regional refining market that we depend on. The ripple effect is real, even if the wave didn’t originate on our shore.
Japan’s situation is interesting by comparison. They’ve apparently struck some kind of arrangement to transit the strait — at a cost — and they’re sitting on strategic reserves that give them serious breathing room. Someone in a discussion I came across noted that Japan runs on public transport in a way we simply don’t, which means per capita they’re burning far less fuel than Australians are. That’s a whole other conversation about urban planning and infrastructure that I’ll save for another day, but it does explain why they’re in a position to help us rather than scrambling themselves.
What strikes me about the political dimension here is how differently this could have gone. There’s been a lot of online noise about whether the gas export tax negotiations are somehow tangled up with these fuel supply assurances — and look, it’s a fair question. We’re one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, and with Qatar’s capacity knocked around, our gas is suddenly a very significant geopolitical card. It would be naive to think these conversations are happening in isolation. But threading that needle — protecting energy supply while still pushing for a fair return on our resources — is genuinely hard, and dismissing the government’s effort because you’re suspicious of the motivation feels a bit too cynical to me.
There’s also a broader critique floating around that Australia has been too close to the US and Israel throughout this whole conflict, and that it’s compromised our diplomatic standing in the region. I have some sympathy for that view, I really do. The lack of any meaningful condemnation of actions that have caused enormous civilian suffering is something I find deeply uncomfortable. But I also recognise the pragmatic reality that a middle power like Australia has limited leverage, and burning bridges with Washington right now — under this administration — carries serious risks that would fall on ordinary people, not on the politicians making the call. That doesn’t mean silence is costless. It isn’t. But the foreign policy calculus is genuinely complex, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone.
What I keep coming back to, though, is the counterfactual. Think about who else could be sitting in the Lodge right now, and what their approach to this crisis might look like. The mind goes to dark places. Committing military assets to someone else’s conflict in exchange for fuel shipments. Paying through the nose to the Americans while cosying up to Washington in ways that would horrify our regional neighbours. Running dry while waiting for a phone call that never comes.
Instead, we’ve got ministers actually doing the rounds — meeting with Japanese counterparts, getting on the phone with Singapore, locking in supply chains before the shortage bites. It’s not glamorous. It won’t trend on social media. But people can fill their tanks, supply lines are holding, and Japan’s PM is coming to visit. That’s not nothing.
Boring leadership, done well, is a gift. We’ve had the other kind. I know which one I prefer.