Droppie [infosec] 🐨
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2026/03/27/the-world-turned-upside-down
BY:
Paul Bongiorno is a columnist for The Saturday Paper and a 35-year veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery:
The entire planet is paying a very high price for the abandonment of a world order that once constrained the powerful from actions that weaker nations would struggle to survive.
The fuel crisis foisted on us by the Iran war is a dramatic case in point. The visiting head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, says the scale of the economic carnage caused by the war is worse than the combined impacts of the three biggest energy shocks in modern history.
Birol had in mind the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, which led to rationing and petrol queues. He also cited the 2022 gas crunch, which came in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Birol said he was worried households around the world were not better informed about the magnitude of the challenge we are facing. The federal opposition lays that very charge at the feet of the Albanese government. Hindsight is a wonderful gift for parties not in government.
In the first instance, Anthony Albanese’s job as prime minister is to avoid panicking the populace, especially as the facts, as Energy Minister Chris Bowen correctly outlined, did not warrant immediate draconian action.
That was particularly so when United States President Donald Trump was assuring the world that his military intervention would be swift and short-lived.
One cabinet minister observed Australians simply do not trust Trump and this “hugely” contributed to the undermining of Bowen’s message that there was no need to panic buy.
Trump’s inability to keep open the critical Strait of Hormuz, the gateway for about 20 per cent of the globe’s oil and gas, and Iran’s retaliation against its neighbouring energy-rich Gulf states, sent the price of petrol, diesel and gas soaring.
Australia’s abundance of natural gas spared it this trifecta, but the disruption of our energy market was complete, with Bowen having the embarrassing task of informing parliament every day about the growing number of service stations that had run out of fuel. This is a problem more of distribution than supply, but a problem all the same.
The opposition kept up its pursuit of the government’s handling of the mounting crisis. They say it is inadequate if not complacent. This drew charges from Bowen and other ministers that the Liberal leadership had chosen “partisanship over patriotism, and they should hang their heads in shame”.
Bowen, however, began taking measures that ordinarily would be considered to border on the extreme. He lowered the fuel standards for diesel and petrol so that “dirtier” petrol from the Brisbane Ampol refinery normally destined for export can now legally be sold in Australia. The purpose was to boost supply in an attempt to restrain price rises.
This did not stop petrol prices reaching a record average high of $2.38 a litre on Monday. According to the Australian Institute of Petroleum (AIP), this tops the previous record average of $2.19 set the previous week.
Albanese sought assurances from his counterpart in Singapore that this major supplier of refined product to Australia will not leave us in the lurch. Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong is full of good intentions in this regard, particularly in light of Australia’s reliability as a supplier of liquefied natural gas.
AIP chief executive Malcolm Roberts says if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for the next couple of weeks, however, refineries in Asia that supply about 80 per cent of Australia’s refined product will struggle to meet orders. Roberts fears our imported supplies could fall off a cliff by the end of April.
Bowen was more upbeat, telling parliament that the six cancelled ships he spoke of earlier had now been “filled with new alternative orders” from different locations, following interactions with foreign counterparts. Besides replacing those, the industry has informed him it has secured at least three more cargoes for April and May.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, notes the world we live in feels “upside down”. She says it is brutal, harsh and unforgiving, with old economic models of stability and safety facing a new reality.
In a speech to the Australian parliament, made as Australia finalised a free trade deal with the European Union, von der Leyen echoed sentiments Prime Minister Albanese expressed in a keynote address to the Minerals Council on Monday night.
Albanese pointed to the physical destruction of oil and gas infrastructure across the Middle East. He said that even if the conflict ended tomorrow, “there would still be a long economic tail to reckon with”.
Hopes of an early end to the conflict were buffeted when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war’s end would depend not on the US but on when Israel says it’s done. Trump would not be the first American president challenged by Netanyahu.
Albanese said the “stable, predictable world of ever-expanding free trade is gone and it will not be returning any time soon”.
From both von der Leyen’s and Albanese’s perspectives, Trump is a central driving force in this global disruption.
There is no doubt this week’s free trade deal, signed after eight years of stalling negotiations, was spurred by the US president’s willingness to risk trade wars by imposing tariffs in defiance of pacts Washington had made with many countries, including Australia.
Australia and the EU also part company with Trump on the science of climate change and the imperative of decarbonising economies. Von der Leyen said she was proud they had made decarbonisation “a defining pillar of our free trade agreement”.
The European Commission president said, with geopolitics at boiling point, building homegrown energy supply would be necessary to deal with price shocks. She said we are “in a race to electrify our economies” and future generations will judge us on our progress.
Albanese noted Australia’s key role in decarbonising the global economy, which will need from us “more copper, more rare earths and more iron ore”. He said that’s why the biggest economies in the world are knocking on Australia’s door. The EU is the latest partner, joining the US and Canada in bolstering critical minerals cooperation and development.
No one could be more out of sympathy with this agenda than One Nation, which is consolidating its position as a serious second or third political force, as clearly demonstrated at last weekend’s South Australian election.
The new world political order in Australia sees an end to the dominance of the old Labor–Coalition duopoly. This week the YouGov poll, in line with a number of recent polls, shows the major parties are now commanding just half of voters’ primary support. It is a long way from their accustomed 70 per cent support in years gone by.
Labor’s national secretary, Paul Erickson, had some encouraging analysis of the South Australian result when he briefed Labor members in Canberra. The popularity and ascendancy of Premier Peter Malinauskas was a factor in the size of the victory. So, too, the unity and discipline of the Labor Party in contrast to the disarray of the Liberals, with their leadership churn and public conflict between moderates and conservatives.
The Liberals’ No. 1 Senate candidate for South Australia, factional powerbroker Alex Antic, does nothing to hide his admiration for Pauline Hanson and her divisive social policy attitudes.
Anthony Albanese is no Malinauskas – indeed, the premier is a rarely talented politician – but federal Labor has manifested the sort of unity and cohesion that stands it in good stead to present as a safe option in troubled times.
Albanese is completely ascendant in the parliamentary party, although he has internal critics who worry that his instincts are poor when it comes to handling criticism. They point to his reaction to the Lakemba Mosque protest and the immediate aftermath of the Bondi massacre.
The federal Liberals are on to their second leader since the last election and so far Angus Taylor hasn’t worried Albanese. He has made a good fist of adding to the government’s discomfort on the current oil shock, but this is not exactly a hard thing to do. Incumbents always cop the blame in a cost-of-living crisis.
The latest ANZ–Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence rating is an amber light for the government. Confidence fell 7.9 per cent last week at the same time as inflation expectations reached a record high.
The survey’s finding has confidence at its lowest level since records began in 1973. Soaring fuel prices and interest rate increases are putting enormous pressure on Treasurer Jim Chalmers to come up with something in the upcoming budget.
Labor is avoiding any sort of electoral test at the upcoming Farrer byelection but is keenly watching how the Angus Taylor-led Liberals and the Nationals fare in the early May poll.
Independent Michelle Milthorpe is running again after an impressive showing against Sussan Ley at the 2025 election. Milthorpe has Climate 200 backing but says that because of her family farming background she has voted for the Nationals in the past, and for the Liberals before challenging Ley last year. Locals say Milthorpe is more in the mould of the successful Indi independent Helen Haines.
Not everyone who sees the imperative of addressing climate change is a teal or a Green. In fact, Haines’s success is as sure an indicator as any that the Nationals underestimate support in regional Australia for renewables and mitigating climate change.
In that regard, the world is not completely upside down.
#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #GreensYEAH #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies #PHONkedinthehead
The world turned upside down
The entire planet is paying a very high price for the abandonment of a world order that once constrained the powerful from actions that weaker nations would struggle to survive. The fuel crisis foisted on us by the Iran war is a dramatic case in point. The visiting head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, says the scale of the economic carnage caused by the war is worse than the combined impacts of the three biggest energy shocks in modern history.
