Ian Verrender

The energy supply to create electricity is now soaring.

So the cost of electricity is likely to rise substantially in Australia, around the world.

And how is artificial intelligence going to be produced and run if there are power shortages or at least extraordinarily large increases in the cost of electricity?

Yeah, well, look, is it enough?

It's probably not going to make very much impact on people's budgets, your household budget, because the price of...

petrol and diesel has soared.

And so you get a little bit off the top, you're probably not even going to notice.

I mean, the cost of fuel is going to be so much higher than you were paying just a month ago that a little bit off the top is not going to really make that much difference.

Sure.

But if you're already paying $60 more per tank or $80 more, you know, $19 less doesn't really, you know, doesn't really hit the nerve, does it?

But the key question here, too, is what impact does this have on inflation?

And right off the go yesterday, we had some economists coming out saying this is going to fuel inflation.

And, you know,

if only it were that simple.

I mean it's a very complex kind of issue here and on the one hand you've got to say well they are correct because if the government budget is being depleted by a couple of billion dollars as a result of this measure because it's money not coming into the government coffers therefore the government is putting out another couple of billion dollars into the economy then you can argue that that is inflationary.

But on the other hand

If the cost of fuel goes directly through to the consumer price index, to the inflation measure, as it is, and that looks like inflation is going up, then anything you do to bring down the cost of fuel surely must be deflationary.

But here's the quick answer.

I mean, if you do this, all you're doing really is extending the pain.

You're lessening the pain at the peak, but extending it for a longer period.