Too chicken to realise Opal’s a gem

But, as Frank Hardy’s alter-ego “Billy Borker” used to say, “There are none so blind as those that will not see”.

The key finding of the Comgas Evaluation was that unsniffable fuel has maximum benefit only in areas where sniffable fuel cannot be obtained. Ironically, the communities where Opal fuel is now most desperately needed are Alice Springs, Coober Pedy and Tennant Creek.

Making the fuel available only to selected remote Indigenous communities is like walking in the rain wearing one gumboot. That’s why the Northern Territory coroner and the Tangentyre Council’s CAYLUS youth service called on the federal government months ago to subsidise a comprehensive roll-out of the fuel. Children in Papunya will not be safe while traffickers can readily obtain sniffable fuel in “nearby” Alice Springs.

A po-faced Mr Abbott is saying that “not a single Indigenous community that has applied for unsniffable petrol has been denied it”. This is no doubt true. It may also be true that voters are sitting in open-mouthed amazement watching the health minister respond to a crisis in the central desert with a submission-based funding scheme.

The instruction is to fill out the form and send it off to the department where the application will be considered in due course.

Is this how the minister will deal with an outbreak of bird-flu?