Carrington Clarke

And actually, we are competing to get prices lower for customers, even if that's not what people are feeling.

And it is difficult sometimes to separate inflationary pressures overall with market power allowing them to push up prices.

Yeah.

You've also been looking at another interesting part of the inflationary pressure being seen in Australia and something that will probably lead to some of that price pressure in the second and third waves that people speak about, which is plastics.

Now, I think most people probably know that plastic comes from oil, from crude oil.

obviously an interruption of oil supply leads to higher prices.

But I was astonished by some of the numbers about what the price rises have been in some parts of the plastic sector.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe one of the price rises was more than 100%.

Yeah, sneaky plastic is in almost everything we purchase, anything that isn't kind of fresh food.

And often, as you say, it's also coming wrapped in or at least packaged in before it gets to us.

We have a situation now where oil prices, again, surging past $120 a barrel for the price of Brent crude.

That is concerning in itself.

And obviously, Australians have been dealing with slightly lower petrol prices since the excise cut.

That feels like it's going to shift pretty quickly now if we keep up with that elevated price.

But as you say, I think the bigger concern right now is are we actually going to not be able to access it?

Are we drawing down so much on the reserves that we had

that actually there won't be crude to refine into petrol and also feed through to all these other important items.

Yeah, this is already playing out, particularly in South Asia, Southeast Asia.

They have been dealing with... Many countries have already gone to rationing because they are concerned about their own internal supplies.

Australia is fortunate.