Michael Janda

It's because people aren't sure where the two parties are willing to stop.

The lines in the sand keep being broken.

When this conflict began, there were probably two hopes.

The first was Israel and the US were going after the leadership.

They got the supreme leader.

They got a number of other key targets in the regime, and it might just all be done.

That didn't happen.

Then the other off-ramp that investors were hoping for is the taco trade.

Trump always chickens out.

Well, so far he hasn't, and he's threatening to double down.

The Iranians have showed no signs at all of chickening out because they see this as existential.

Well, the problem, Carrington, as many people, particularly on the crossbenches and in the Greens, have pointed out is the big winners from the rising energy prices in Australia are ExxonMobil, Omobile, Chevron, Shell, Woodside Petroleum, Origin Energy, Santos.

Some of those are Australian listed, but many of them are foreign completely or mostly foreign-owned multinationals.

The level of taxation on Australian gas exports is incredibly low.

So the government's not getting massive tax increases from this rise in prices and therefore doesn't have the budget room to pass relief on to domestic consumers and industries without potentially stoking even more inflation.

And that's why those calls for a gas tax have become louder again in the past week.

And we, of course, heard that the government has asked Treasury to model some options about taxing gas exports more because that would help soften this domestic blow of huge increases in liquid fuel prices and possibly the flow-on impact to higher consumer prices because of rising transport costs, supply shortages, potentially even rising electricity prices again if gas prices domestically start going up.

Yeah, but as the saying goes, never waste a good crisis.

And perhaps Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers are seeing that opportunity to do something that they possibly wanted to do anyway.

Well, and the International Energy Agency's come out and said as much.