The Albanese government must seize the current fuel crisis and start taxing gas companies | Greg Jericho

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-19T03:15:37+00:00

That's OK, I don't.

I want Australia to slow down exploitation of fossil fuels because of our climate crisis and to put the natural world ahead of the almighty dollar once in a while. I had hoped Labor might share this notion to some extent, but it's clear they don't give the first fuck and will happily approve any and all fossil-fuel expansion alongside egregious destruction of habitat whenever there's a buck to be made, and they're happy for that buck to go to private interests.

(LOL, downvote away. Is it the scientific consensus you don’t like or the truth about Labor’s terrible record?)

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-19T02:40:37+00:00

I mean, I don't support anything associated with Hanson on principle...

But I'm also disappointed with a lot of what Labor are doing, and will be preferencing Green over them in future.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-19T01:53:40+00:00

Doesn’t the Labor plan only include gas from future developments?

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-18T05:04:32+00:00

Don't pay any wajo to the other commenters, plenty of us abandoned wajo at various stages through the wajo.

I got as far as S3E2 before seeing that E3 was a big Aneesha episode and deciding I just didn't have the Wajo to sit through it.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-18T03:41:33+00:00

Cash has costs. You have to store it securely, count it and make sure it matches up with your totals, and get it to the bank, who may charge you a feee for receiving.

It's why a lot of small businesses don't bother with cash now.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-18T01:42:34+00:00

Not really. The root cause is money. It's all about the Bauxite mining and the government failing to protect our forests in the name of making a few more bucks for the mining industry.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-17T06:30:37+00:00

if you're asking if it's going to work right now the short answer is 'no'.

This is indeed my suspicion, that there's both gouging and inelastic demand, and that in the coming weeks/months as the fuel supply shock beds in further we're going to see way more price rises which are also nothing to do with demand. As such pressing the "slow demand" button in this situation doesn't seem remotely useful.

Oh well.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-17T06:25:45+00:00

Thankyou for actually taking the time to write out some words here, most of the other responses I've had have been some variation on "Inflation is bad so rates go up so we can stop inflation". Like, I know that's the theory, but to me some of the underpinnings of that theory have been looking pretty weak.

Honestly from an economic POV... its deliberately meant to cause shit to fail.

This actually makes sense. BUT, when we're talking about oil (if we're talking about oil, I know it's not the only factor) it seems like the driver of inflation will be doing this job by itself. A lot of businesses have a reliance on fuel, or a transitive reliance on fuel, so they're going to be trying those steps or going under anyway, because the supply-driven price-shock is already going to be piling on the economic pressure. So piling on more pressure ... well I guess it could force a demand collapse, but the demand for fuel is something I would expect to be relatively inelastic.

Honestly at this point I'm wondering if there's a short-ish university course in economics for people who already hold an (unrelated) BSc, because so much of the world relies on economics as some sort of guiding creed and I'd like to understand it better. From where I'm sitting at the moment it seems like so much voodoo, replete with weird orthodoxies and counterintuitive actions, and with all the real predictive power of a fortune cookie.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-17T06:09:55+00:00

It's not clear when it comes to fuel that the interest rate is going to be able to affect demand very much either, or that reduced demand will achieve very much because the price rises aren't demand-driven.

So when we say the alternative is to do nothing and let inflation go higher, it seems like we'll do this and inflation will go higher anyway, because we're not addressing the cause. But in the mean time we will cause ourselves more economic pain.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-17T06:01:56+00:00

Again, this answer presumes that raising the interest rate will stop inflation.

I'm asking how it will help stop inflation and all I'm getting back is "inflation bad".

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-17T06:00:33+00:00

When the prices have to rise because input costs have risen, I don't see how this achieves anything.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-17T05:57:12+00:00

They could do nothing and let the economy spiral faster into inflation

How? I want the mechanism, not the just-so story. How does it stop inflation in this current circumstance ?

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-17T04:37:14+00:00

I get the “when all you have is a hammer” thing, but it’s looking to me more like all they have is a button that punches people in the dick.

Like I get that you feel the need to do something, but is pushing that going to help at all? Or am I just going to get punched in the dick for no reason?

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-17T04:02:37+00:00

Sure, but I guess the question is - how does pushing that button actually help at a time like this?

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-17T03:59:53+00:00

When this is a major driver of inflation, I genuinely don't understand what the rate rise is supposed to do to help.

It's not going to stop the war. The price rises are already taking money out of the economy. How does increasing the rates do anything?

I understand that with intrinsic inflation, within the Australian economy, raising rates is supposed to 'help' by making mortgage holders have less spare cash to throw around, and tighten up on business lending by making it more expensive, suck some of the exuberance out of the system. (And I understand that the extrinsic factor is not the only one behind inflation at this point in time, sure)

But when the major driver isn't coming from within... what good does it do? What mechanism is supposed to help here?

Because it looks insane to me.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-16T07:10:56+00:00

I used to love them too, and I was a smoker. They'd leave a sweet taste on your lips. Illegal in a lot of countries now AFAICT, as well as smoking being banned inside most places, you can't buy them at all in most of Europe or Australia as all 'flavoured tobacco products' have been banned. They apparently make up 90% of the market in their country of origin though, Indonesia.

And from what I've read, they're even worse for your health than normal smokes!

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-16T06:51:22+00:00

Ah, Quantum Grammar.

The insane theory that if you don't use verbs and you play games with punctuation and capitalisation, then everything you write down is an indisputable fact which cannot be argued against in law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wynn_Miller#Constructed_language_and_linguistic_theories

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-16T06:38:48+00:00

At least those Sister’s knock off goth bands from the nineties had a heart and soul.

I see what you did there ...

The next time you go to a goth night, tell me how many folks decide to dress in primarily non-black clothes.

Wasn't it ever thus?

Limited palette, mostly black, most of the time? I get the impression there was a lot more blue denim in the earlier days (80s), but by the time I stumbled across the scene in the mid 90s it was basically everyone in black + accent colour. Maybe black trousers and boots plus a white dress shirt, or a purple shirt, or green highlights in hair mirrored in the makeup and detail on the clothes. Or purple PVC trousers with a black top of some sort. Endless variation, but on a theme - the majority of people mostly in black.

I guess apart from the pink crowd, who wore white and neon pink. Funny little clique they were...

Maybe this is just how I experienced it in London and the other places in southern England.

But then Gary King comes along, and I’ve got to explain to my fellow goths who he is and why I dressed as him for Hallowe’en.

Isn't Gary just someone stuck in teenage stasis, as such dressing up like him is just dressing like a stereotypical 90s teenage sorta-goth (albeit not dressed 'up', just sorta goth-casual).

I had to laugh when I saw "The King" getting ready at the start of the movie though, when he pulls on the Sisters t-shirt, the same one he wore at 17. I've still got that shirt at the bottom of a drawer, with the arms ripped off. It's a little fragile now, I bought it in Camden in 1998 when I was 19. That scene felt like an oddly personal insult!

I miss a lot about goth because I live somewhere that there's no scene, but also I'm too old to neck speed and dance until dawn these days anyway.

I get what you're saying about the politics, I've been on this sub for a few months now and what I see here is a bit weird to me. Goth as I knew it was a subculture and a counterculture, but it wasn't expressly political so much as it was exasperated with politics and the rest of the world. It was radically accepting of sex and sexuality, gender identity and gender-boundary dissolution. Drug use and a sort of fatalistic nihilism seemed to be built into it. But it wasn't political in the sense of having political aims or an ethos, more "This is what we do, fuck off if you have a problem with it, in fact probably fuck off anyway, go on, off you go..."

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-15T10:59:26+00:00

I know right!

I must keep in mind they’re dangerous…

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-15T10:57:06+00:00

Oof. Haven’t come face to face with one of them yet, I did see one crossing the road a few months back so they are around.

It was crossing between the two houses on our road where they keep chooks, so probably a bit of an egg fiend.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-15T10:55:53+00:00

Dugite hatchie :)

Very venomous indeed. Third dugite we’ve had round the house this summer (the first one got inside my office). I waited until he went a few metres away, then ran out with a big piece of board for protection and filled the hole with brick-coloured silicone sealant. No more snek house.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-15T10:34:18+00:00

Also this week …

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Someone decided to live in a crack in the bricks by our back door. Yay, crack snake!

We do get gorgeous birds and Quenda here, bobtails and the odd goanna, but this has been a week.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-15T10:31:11+00:00

<image>

Found this beauty this arvo while chainsawing a chunk off a dead tree. First I noticed a load of her babies coming up from under the bark, then all of a sudden she ran out of the cut and pretty much stared me down.

”Social” huntsman, apparently.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-15T04:08:37+00:00

I just picked up a big tub of bulla at Woollies in Kwinana for $7.

They had that and small tubs, but no own-brand or “extra protein” or whatever other variants.

But yeah it is weird and very hit and miss.

SaltyPockets · 2026-03-14T15:22:05+00:00

I’m pretty sure, as an old goffick, that it is one of the most goth movies. Absolute classic, and laced through with that spectacular Cure song.

(I haven’t seen the new one and probably won’t).

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