Yep the old early estimated profits for bitumen were done back...

Yep the old early estimated profits for bitumen were done back when Australia had an oil refinery business with bitumen as a by-product, now we no longer have a refining business in the country that has bitumen as a byproduct so all bitumen has to be sourced from China, which right now is looking like not the most reliable source of supply, given trade sanctions and inflationary shipping costs and lack of shipping capacity worldwide.

Tomorrow the Chinese government could shut down exports of bitumen to Australia and the price of bitumen worldwide would rise, would probably result in all road works ceasing in a matter of weeks/months as existing stocks ran out.

GRV would have a pretty good argument saying that if you want to be able to build roads in Australia then the country needs to have independent in-house supplies of bitumen. As well as the production profile of producing diesel fuel. Pretty hard to rebuild a country without roads and a bit hard to fight a war or even just operate the economy without diesel fuel.