Christine Milne has another statement on peak oil at the Greens Blog and at Crikey :

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. ...