In the famous tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes , swindlers sell an emperor a suit of cloth they claim is invisible to fools. Nobody wants to be the fool who admits they cannot see it. Not the emperor’s ministers, not his courtiers, and not the crowds in the street. It takes a child to say what everyone can see: that the emperor has no clothes.
In Australia, a similar performance is under way. Only this time, the invisible fabric is spun from crude oil.
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