Will Petrol Sink Labor, Again?

The Centre for Obvious Outcomes, er, the Resolve Political Monitor, has delivered SHOCK news – a near majority of Australians blame Anthony Albanese and his government for the nation’s cost of living crisis.

To quote one of our greatest public intellectuals, oh derrrr!

In fact, 50% of polled Australians blame either the Federal or State/Territory government for our current inflationary predicament (40% of the ire reserved for the feds and 10% for the states.) If you thought Tim Tams floated up to eyewatering prices, brace yourself: inflation has increased from 1.9% to 3.8% over the last six months.

With petrol edging $3 a litre (half of that being excise and GST) and Energy Minister Chris Bowen insisting that Australia’s fuel supply is secure and that there is no need for rationing.

Is it though?

Deep in Bowen’s chest, where his authoritarian Labor heart pumps away with the lifeblood of socialism coursing through his taxpayer-funded cholesterol-clogged veins, he cannot wait to institute some form of control over energy. He is the Minister, right? That means dominion over all that would go boom or pop to make things go?

On the 13^th of March he told reporters: “I ask Australians: buy as much fuel as you need, no more, no less […] There are other people, I’ve seen it on Facebook Marketplace, filling up jerry cans, Bunnings running out of jerry cans… selling fuel at inflated prices.

“That is un-Australian. It’s dangerous. It shouldn’t be done.”

You mean, it’s un-Labor. Because if you were in charge, we could sit on the world’s biggest oil reserves and have refineries in every major city and somehow come up desperately short.

Labor’s response to a crisis – pick your crisis, any crisis – is to increase their power over ordinary people. They do it because they think we’re panicky little peasants who can’t think or act for themselves. Bowen, if he cracked open an economics textbook (we recommend Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell) would realise that there’s no such thing as an “inflated price” – prices are determined by the available supply and the demand for the product. It’s so obvious, I have to point it out to a Labor politician. (A Greens politician: prices are racist.)

Would Bowen go to the football and stomp his foot seeing “inflated prices” for Four N’ Twenty meat pies at the concession stand? No, because the comparison is ludicrous. You can’t compare the value of frozen pies in a supermarket with the value of baked pies at a venue with no alternative. Vendors could charge $10 for sauce, but they don’t – because prices are determined by how much people are prepared to pay.

Trust me, it’s true: we’ve all stood in line waiting for the pie warmer to go ding and forked out half a week’s wages for what plops out.

With successive governments bungling Australia’s management of fuel reserves, the phrase “we won’t need petrol rationing” will be the new “two weeks to flatten the curve” – it’s not only going to happen, but it’s going to happen and it’ll be a good thing, it’ll happen and be extended beyond what’s reasonable, and anyone opposed to it is a dangerous cooker who hates grandma, untaxed sunsets, and dancing nurses.

Perhaps our forebears were made of harder stock, because Ben Chifley’s Labor government was brought down in spectacular fashion over petrol rationing, imposed well after the conclusion of World War II. There is High Court precedent that Federal governments can’t ration petrol by decree, but force it through importing or releasing less than what’s needed. So, screwing it all up, in other words.

Then leader of the Country Party (the forerunner to the Nationals) Arthur Fadden said, “I am inclined to think that petrol rationing was the rock on which the government finally foundered.”

I don’t know – did the 1940s ALP have a vast apparatus of spin merchants and bullshit artists on hand to sell their crappy superannuated rationing regime? It’s Iran! It’s Ukraine! It’s the vibe! Yeah, It’s mostly the vibe.

Then again, will it? Australians seem pretty cool with tyranny, re-electing the most draconian COVID governments back into power (c.f. WA, Victoria, Queensland.) Hell, Victoria will probably do it twice.

The Reserve Bank has just turned up the heat on rates and probably will again, which usually boils governments to death. I don’t think it’ll touch Albo and Grim Jim; seeing the conservative (lol) side of politics bifurcated between One Nation and the Coalition. Half of Australia blames the government for cost of living – so stop voting for big government parties, maybe? Just a thought. And no, One Nation is not a “libertarian” party, stop pretending.

Instead of closing down refineries and chasing green ideological pipe dreams, the government should (hey here’s a shocker) get out of the way. To paraphrase a young rebel princess from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away: the more Bowen tightens his grip on energy, the greater chance it will slip through his fingers.

Buttery fingers at that.