Ian Verrender

And the European Central Bank says that if this continues, we could see a halving in growth in Europe.

So, you know, already it's starting to really reverberate through the global economy.

But as I said, here in Australia, we're really quite fortunate.

I'd have to say the government's decision to cut the excise taxes, while it's welcome from the Bowser point of view, you have to question, are we really sending the right price signal through to consumers here?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, so we're already at what, stage two of this fuel program that the federal government's implemented.

Do we wait until we start to really run out of fuel to be stepped up to a stage three where we get some kind of government restrictions coming into force?

And that is what's going to happen globally.

Either prices will rise so high that people stop using fuel and the global economy slows down, or governments will step in

with supply restrictions.

You know, you can only use X amount of fuel per week or you can only buy fuel on certain days of the week, whatever those restrictions might be.

And, you know, perhaps it might be the right thing for the Australian government to do if this situation does worsen to basically give the price signal through at least that we were getting prior to the reduction in the excise tax.

Thanks, Conor.

Well, it's better than not having it, let's face it.

And, you know, we as a nation have the highest consumption of diesel per person than any other country on the planet.

And the reason for that is we're, you know, a massive mining country and a huge agricultural country as well.

So we require vast amounts of diesel to keep our industry going.

And it's a big continent.

with a relatively small population, which requires a lot of transport, intercity transport, all run by diesel.

There's a percentage of cars, around about, I think, 10% of passenger vehicles run on diesel as well.