I’ve been thinking about putting a padlock on my diesel tank.
“Do it,” urged Kathryn, my personal assistant. “Diesel’s going to four dollars a litre.”
She showed me texts from mates driving around Lancefield trying to stockpile diesel in 44-gallon drums.
Wait, why are people prepping?
Well, maybe because they listened to Energy Minister Chris Bowen, a man who believes in hot air and wind, who assured us this week:
“There is no need for panic buying.”
Better make it two padlocks.
It’s easy to write this off as the toilet paper panic of 2020, except this time the thing running out actually runs everything.
The Strait of Hormuz is a sliver of water between Iran and Oman, two places most Aussies would struggle to find on a map. Still, it carries 20 per cent of the world’s oil. That makes it the jugular of the global economy, and right now someone has their hands around it.
Here’s how it hits farmers like me:
When oil prices surge, the tanker that rolls up my driveway to fill my diesel tank costs more. So farmers swear a lot. The fertiliser to grow the food is already up 30 per cent. So farmers swear some more. The truckie who moves the harvest needs to charge more. By the time your food hits the shelf, every single hand that touched it paid more to do it. That’s inflation.
Here’s how it hits you:
Prices are already rising at 3.8 per cent — well above the RBA’s 2 to 3 per cent target. Higher oil prices push that higher. Higher inflation means the Reserve Bank reaches for interest rates. So if you’ve got a mortgage, that distant rumble you can hear?
That’s not thunder.
My wife, meanwhile, has moved on.
She test drove a new electric car this week. We’ve got solar on the roof, and a battery going in soon. We drove past a servo on the way home.
Diesel: $2.60 a litre.
She didn’t even notice.
Felt good!
Tread Your Own Path!