Ian Verrender

And those vehicles, they're subject to what's known as what economists call elasticity of demand.

If the price gets too high, you don't drive your car.

You catch the train, you walk, you ride a pushbike.

Yeah.

But when you're driving a Mack truck from one city to another, or you're running BHP's iron ore division up in the Pilbara, you have no option but to keep using the same amount of fuel regardless of the price.

And so we need supply.

And that's what we're concentrating on at the moment.

Supply, not so much price.

Well, we don't know anything, really.

It's totally opaque.

And look, at the moment, and quite rightly, the government is focused on supply, just making sure we've got enough fuel to keep the country running.

And the price factor, well, that's being pushed into the background.

But there's broader implications than simply how much it's going to cost to fill up the truck or fill up the tractor or whatever it is.

I mean, this is going to have a really large effect on the Australian economy down the track because it is going to really feed into the inflationary forces that will probably push the Reserve Bank into raising interest rates and really detract from our growth.

So, you know, at the moment, we don't really even know what the spot price of oil is.

You know, everybody keeps talking about, oh, the price of Brent is now, what is it today?

But if you wanted to buy a barrel of oil on the spot market, like you wanted it right now, you'd probably be paying $140 to $145 because that contract that we keep talking about is for delivery down the track in a couple of months' time.

And most markets are pricing in a resolution to the conflict at that stage.

But the price of oil right now is actually much, much higher than the price we're quoting.

And now on top of this...