An edited version of this piece appeared in today's Crikey email.

Not long ago I wrote in Crikey giving the Climate Institute a very hard time over their positioning on geosequestration. While I still think they are utterly wrong on that, I write today to support their excellent report which the Federal Opposition yesterday dishonestly and disingenuously abused in Question Time.

While the battle of petrol price populism between the old parties drags on, Christine plugged away once again last night at her favourite Senate Estimates sparring partner, ABARE.

Update: Transcript available here. While ABARE is finally waking up to the understanding that there might be such a phenomenon as climate change, peak oil, sadly, still eludes them.

Last night, Philip Glyde, ABARE's chief, told Estimates that peak oil was consistently left out of ABARE's models because the organisation's assessment is that there are no and will be no capacity constraints for at least 30 years. Blithely unaware, seemingly, of the point that peak oil doesn't mean that the world is actually running out of oil tomorrow, but that the peak has been reached and from now on supply will increasingly struggle to meet demand, Glyde presented ABARE's recently adjusted projections of long-term oil price.

After years of consistently telling Christine in Estimates hearings that oil price will be steady at around $40-45, they now project the price in the coming year at $82, falling back to $67 in the medium term, 2013 and beyond. The $82 projection, they accept, might have to be revisited since the price has been above $100 for most of this year, and is now rising through $135. I will post the transcripts of the always amusing discussions as soon as Hansard makes them available.

In regard to ABARE's contention that oil supply is fine and dandy, it might be worth their while to have a read of this interview with the Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol. His assessment is that we should "leave oil before it leaves us".

In regard to the bickering over which tax to cut and whether Fuel Watch would be good or bad, I thought I'd post the comments Christine made today to journalists here in Canberra:

The Fuel Watch scheme and Brendan Nelson's proposal to reduce tax are nothing more than populist petrol politicking in the face of what is a national and global crisis. The Greens need to be convinced that at worst it does nothing and at best it actually does allow people some transparency and get us the cheapest price that it can, bearing in mind that any tiny relief it may provide will be swallowed up by price rises within weeks.

The Fuel Watch distraction must not be allowed to take the political pressure off the Government to invest immediately in the mass transit, fuel efficiency and alternative fuels that are the only way to provide real relief from ever rising prices. We will closely examine the legislation for Fuel Watch when it is brought before the Parliament, and make our judgement as to whether it will provide any short-term relief, while we continue to push for the long term planning which will make a real impact."

This piece was published today on Crikey's daily email. Also see my media release from this morning on the issue.

I have to confess myself quite flabbergasted by the extent to which our governments, oppositions, economists, planners and media claim to have been caught unawares by the rocketing global oil price and imply that no one could have seen it coming.

Not that I am surprised by their position – after all, they rely on ABARE. I have challenged ABARE at every Estimates hearing for two years and more as to their long-term estimates of oil price, and got the same answer each time - $40-45. Even as the price hit $100 early this year, they stuck firm to their projection. And yet ABARE continues to command more respect than the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), which has been spot on in its forecasts.

But, just as the reality of climate change is only now sinking in, years after the science was settled and the urgency unquestionable, no-one can truly claim that they weren’t warned about peak oil.

One of my first actions after being elected to the Senate was to instigate a Senate Inquiry into Australia’s Future Oil Supply and Alternative Transport Fuels. In this Inquiry, everyone from Iranian oil guru, Dr Bakhtiari, to public transport groups, to the Councils of Western Sydney, to ASPO and many more, were all calling for the same thing: a rapid shift to mass transit, higher vehicle fuel efficiency standards, an end to the Fringe Benefits tax concession on motor vehicles and accelerated R&D into second generation biofuels.

The Inquiry’s conclusion which was tabled well over a year ago, involved Liberal, Labor and Greens in a consensus report making all these key recommendations. Then the old parties buried it. But, just as geosequestered CO2 will, it is now bubbling to the surface.

A few months later, I released a major publication, Re-Energising Australia, which presented a comprehensive policy platform to deal with the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil and build a better, cleaner, cleverer Australia. The considerable discussion this report garnered means it cannot have completely passed everyone by.

During last year’s election campaign, and as oil passed $100 early this year, I and many others repeatedly called for action to deal with peak oil and climate change together. And then, in my Budget Reply last week, I started with a reference to dwindling oil supplies matching the threat of Arctic Ice melt, and repeated my calls made in the 2006 Budget Reply, to use the surplus to oil-proof Australia.

The Prime Minister cannot legitimately say he has done all he can when he is making decisions now that will make the situation worse. Last week’s Budget allocated to rail a tiny 5% of what was given to roads in the next year. $78 million on metro public transport is whistling in the wind. The much-vaunted Green Car program doesn’t even start until 2011, after the next election. Infrastructure Australia and the Building Australia Fund only have to consider climate change at the discretion of the Minister and peak oil not at all.

To suggest that a price-watch program is all he can do, whilst waiting for Martin Ferguson’s energy security plan, is disingenuous. Particularly given that leaving the Minister for Coal in charge of resource planning is letting the cat guard the cream. Ferguson is already talking up liquefying coal to make a hugely polluting transport fuel.

As the Senate Inquiry said, no plan for peak oil should make climate change worse, yet this is precisely what the Rudd Government is on track to do, with the support of the Coalition, who want to exclude transport from the effort to reduce greenhouse emissions.

What about mandatory vehicle fuel efficiency standards and ending the fringe benefits tax concession for vehicles? What about tying subsidies to car manufacturers to increased efficiency? What about an immediate multi-billion dollar investment into mass transit, cycleways and redesigning cities?

The great thing about climate change and peak oil is that the solutions are the same for both, and that these solutions will lead to a better quality of life in cities, better air quality, a healthier population and a more connected community. The re-design of cities will see more walkways, bicycle paths and localism as we move to urban villages linked by rapid mass transit, and as we encourage businesses to take their jobs to where the people are. It’s a chance to get off the treadmill if we embrace it.

As Einstein said, you cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it. Those who now finally realise what we are facing should involve the people who saw the problem coming and listen to the solutions that we have advocated. Only then can we sweep aside the failure of imagination and the refusal to leave the fossil fuel age, and get on with building the post-carbon world.

Catching up on the last few weeks, I've finally posted a pile of transcripts of Senate Estimates hearings to Christine's website.

For those with a bit of time on their hands - or fast readers - there's some choice tidbits there that are really worth finding.

The pick of the lot is the first of many (I'm sure) head-to-heads with Christine and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong - without a doubt two of the more formidable women in Parliament. This one, from the day after Garnaut's interim report was released, was trying to get to the bottom of how Labor set their 60% 2050 emissions target.

In a similar vein, this transcript digs into whether any assessment has been made of how much greenhouse emissions savings key climate programs will achieve. The answer at this stage is no, but we have good reason to believe that this is already changing, and the new Government is getting serious about some of this.

For those interested in climate change and agriculture, you can find some very interesting discussions and info here.

Christine did some digging around on the Regional Partnerships rorts revealed before the last election, and put a few questions on notice that may yield some important information. She also drove some discussion of rorting of the Tasmanian Community Forests Agreement grants, which were made public by the Audit Office, after that questioning, last week (see Christine's release here).

Here's an interesting and useful exchange over greenhouse emissions from the proposed pulp mill and how that intersects with Labor's election promise to introduce a greenhouse trigger into the Environmental Planning and Biodiversity Protection Act.

This collection of transcripts on oil, peak oil, transport and related issues starts with a delightful exchange between Christine and her favourite sparring partners, ABARE.

On biosecurity, there are a few different exchanges: on general failings with AQIS identified by an Ernst and Young report; on the abalone virus; on import risk assessment for taro; and on weeds.

Questions around the use of pesticides on strawberries provided a fertile discussion.

Finally, Christine spent some time chasing down an issue she's been working on for a while - PET scanners for regional areas.

I hope this is useful and interesting for people.

One of the most glaring disjunctions of this election campaign has been that, as the global oil price storms through the record levels of $100 a barrel, both of the big old parties are still throwing billions of dollars at more and more road funding.

When even the PM himself acknowledges that high global oil prices are contributing to inflationary pressures in Australia, you would have thought it was time to rethink our transport funding strategy. But, no. Only the Greens are putting forward policies which Kenneth Davidson in today's Age says "make economic, as well as environmental sense".

The major policy Davidson was referring to was released earlier today at Melbourne's Southern Cross Station by Christine Milne and Greens candidate for Melbourne, Adam Bandt. Called Roads to Rails, it would allocate at least 25% of Commonwealth transport funding via AusLink 2 to low-polluting mass transit and freight alternatives. That's some $5.6 billion from 2008-09 to 2013-14 directed away from roads to rail, busways, cycleways and similar clean options.

Beyond 2014, after a few years to ramp in, Roads to Rails would see 50%+ of AusLink 3 funding allocated to the clean alternatives. Only then, once a majority of funding is going to alternatives to roads, will our priorities be coming into line with what the combined climate change / peak oil crunch makes necessary.

One of the reasons the Government has consistently failed to change direction on transport funding is that it is working on the advice of ABARE, its long-discredited forecaster, which still reckons that the price of oil long-term will be $40 a barrel. My colleague Oliver has written before about how ABARE live in a parallel universe, but this lunacy really takes the cake. Perhaps if they put a more realistic number forward, our so-called leaders would sit up and pay a bit more attention.

But back to our policy. In general, projects that should receive higher prioritisation thanks to Roads to Rails could include, for example:

• straightening of major rail lines, especially to improve tracks in NSW which lag behind higher standards found in Victoria and Queensland;
• the construction of urban new heavy or light rail, especially linking existing lines in major cities like Sydney and Melbourne;
• the construction of dedicated busways, now common in Brisbane; and
• the construction of safe cycleways, separated from roads.

Without in any way attempting to pork-barrel ;-) , the kinds of specific projects Roads to Rails might contribute to, with matching State or Territory funding, could include the long-promised Strathfield-Hornsby rail link, a train line along the Eastern Freeway to East Doncaster in Melbourne (instead of the cross-city tunnel), cycleways in inner metro areas in each capital city, and dedicated busways in outer suburban areas like western Sydney.

You can read the media release from today's launch here.