This evening I looked into the eyes of someone in hell – mortgage rates and electricity bills soaring, gasoline prices near doubling in a week, but he has a family to support.
I was walking my dogs past a guy waiting at a bus stop. I didn’t know who he was, but I said “Hi”, as you do – I live in a friendly neighbourhood.
He said “Hi”, hesitated a moment, then asked “What is this area like?”
I replied “Its pretty good, are you thinking of moving here?”
He replied “No, I have to leave my car here. I can’t afford fuel. My job is here, but I live in [town 25 miles away]. I can’t afford the fuel to drive here anymore. I can afford $1.50 bus fare, but not the fuel to drive home every night”.
I said “Its a pretty quiet area. The only trouble I ever had, two years ago someone stabbed my tires. But I’ve never had a car stolen here.”.
Then I suggested “Leave your car next to the park, nobody will bother it. But make sure you move it every night, park somewhere different every night”.
Why not live in the town he works in? Rents in my area are over $700 / week, up from $400 / week three years ago, and houses start at half a million dollars. The town he lives in is more affordable, but has fewer job opportunities.
Why are local rents rising so fast? Partly because of Australia’s high immigration rate, but also because inflation has slowed down house building, by putting a strain on the construction industry. Building companies frequently sign long lead time fixed price contracts, but rising inflation is killing their profit margins, by ramping up the cost of materials and labor faster than what builders expected when the contracts were signed.
if builders managed to survive the initial inflation spike, they have to put their prices way up to mitigate the risk inflation will surge even higher, which makes financing new builds more difficult.
Well meaning laws to increase renters rights have also damaged rental market availability – I know two people who sold their rental properties to owner occupiers, rather than face the uncertainty of increased protections for bad tenants.
Why are building materials skyrocketing? Because a lot of the building materials are imported.
Why is so much imported? Because our manufacturing base is collapsing – the cost of energy has made it difficult to manufacture energy intensive building materials such as structural steel, prefabricated drywall, external cladding and other building materials.
Why is energy so expensive? Because most of Australia’s mainstream political parties prioritised Net Zero over energy affordability. Net Zero motivated policies closed our refineries, closed our factories, and made Australia utterly vulnerable to geopolitical crisis like the current Persian gulf crisis.
What really struck me though, was that guy at the bus stop’s sense of betrayal. He said “Labor has betrayed us”. He kept repeating “They never told us” – about shutting down most of the refineries. The guy I spoke to was a lifelong Labor Party supporter. I suspect he’s re-evaluating those life choices right now.
Of course it wasn’t just Labor – all but one mainstream Aussie political parties contested the 2025 federal election on a platform of support for Net Zero.
How should we help Bus Stop Guy, and other people in his situation?
Ditching Net Zero would help in the medium to long term, as companies responded by rebuilding Australia’s manufacturing and oil refinery base. But rebuilding investor trust after a long period of adverse policy settings is a slow process.
Bus stop guy needs immediate solutions to his problems – secure parking for his automobile, and a more frequent bus service would be a good start. Lower mortgage / rental prices would also help.
But let’s be serious. I don’t expect the politicians whose incompetence created the current mess to come up with any practical solutions to the problems their incompetence has caused. If they had any idea what they were doing, they would never have created such a mess.
Politicians simply do not care. Their only concern is winning elections.
You say
Oh yes they would have, because they do not care. They want votes, by hook or by crook, and nothing else matters.
By way of contrast, even Paul Ehrlich cared, in spite of never acknowledging he was wrong about everything. Politicians do not care if they are right, wrong, or both. It does not matter to the process of getting votes.
Paul Ehrlich cared for Paul Ehrlich.
He also cared about the future, however distorted his vision was. The only future politicians care about is the next election.
he took ninety years to depopulate himself, very thoughtful!
Reality is whatever it is. There is no vote to decide what is real. Politicians can be wrong or right or indifferent about reality, but they don’t elect themselves. We do that. It’s us. if we signal we want stupid stuff they get no benefit from resisting us. How badly it pains them to offer us the stupid stuff we ask for is not a question we need to answer. We always knew they would offer what they think would win votes. If they’re all offering green utopia it’s because we made it clear we won’t elect someone who doesn’t offer it.
It’s us.
It’s only us in a theoretical idealist sense. Blaming us is like blaming all Soviet citizens for everything the Soviet Union did. In every practical sense, there was nothing the Soviet “us” could do about their government until basic economic reality brought down the whole house of cards.
It’s the same in the US. The political system is so rigged that “us” are pretty much limited to tiny gradual changes. Here we are, coming up on the 250th anniversary, and “us” have less control over government than the colonists did then.
Well, I am not so sure, that all the politicians care about is the next election. I have been thinking about this for quite some time (and I can assure you I lived through a fair few elections) and it felt like the politicians seemingly don’t give a hoot about the next elections, otherwise they would not do the stupid things they do, which eventually turn voters off.
It used to be a common saying that the first act of a newly elected Congressman, the first six months, was to plan his re-election.
“Australia’s Fuel Crisis Explained” well worth watching. John Anderson and Dr. John Coyne.
I’ll watch it just to listen to the Aussie accent! 🙂 After I listen to Aussie videos for a while I’ll unconsciously start using that accent. A twist of the tongue.
What accent ? 😉
The one that turns “pen” into “pin”, makes “no” a two syllable word… 😉
No Jeff, you’re referring to a Kiwi accent there.
Ha ha yeah, and their national rugby team – the Oil Blicks.
It’s as entertaining to me as hearing the pirate accent. 🙂
Crickey! Spot on, mate.
I lived in Sydney in the 1990s. As an American and a conservative I was used to debate around many topics. I didn’t seem to see as much in Australia. I remember on a number of occasions asking various people what about this problem (as I perceived). I many times got an answer “the government will fix it”. Riiight!!
As Ronald Regan once said: “The scariest words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to fix things”.
The reason you got that response in Australia is because it goes without saying, that irrespective of the situation that an individual, a community or even the whole nation finds itself in, it was always caused by the government.
Could be a city v country issue. Cities tend to vote Labor (~Democrat) while country votes conservative. Cities tend to rely on government to solve their problems, while country knows that when a problem arises, government won’t be around to solve it e.g. if your area floods, the government likely won’t even acknowledge the issue unless your town goes under. But if the possibility of flood threatens the city then emergency action is demanded and it’s panic stations and media headlines.
Look!
Warring for Israel is FAR more important than ANYTHING else. It is the #1 priority. Trump and our politicians know EXACTLY for whom they are doing what. Don’t forget it at the next election.
BS. It’s partly about Israel, but what’s wrong with that angle? It’s an ally of America. Don’t you realize that the Muslims want to destroy it? Of course it’s more about oil- and there’s nothing wrong with that oil either. It certainly ain’t about democracy- other than a democratic nation is less threatening to its neighbors.
What is with this constant “US does what Israel says” crap? Seems to be far more prevalent lately.
Besides, I thought Trump was working for Putin, not Netenyahu?
Would you rather they be doing it for Iran?
Do you think ANY politicians do anything for their country? They don’t. They do it for themselves.
Seek professional help.
If you believe Iran was not developing nuclear/atomic/radiological warheads and long range delivery systems, I have a bridge for you to buy.
ICBMs and space launch vehicles are kissing cousins.
…and I’ve got this life-expired tower in Paris that’s worth a fortune as scrap.
That’s funny …..and also true of course 🤣
Your as unhinged as the Labor leadership carrying on about the dangers of One Nation vote and parties need to not preference them after the South Australian election. The same labor leadership have no problem with preferences to the Greens who are far more radical and dangerous than One Nation.
It’s a lobbyists world.
“Why are building materials skyrocketing? Because a lot of the building materials are imported.”
How about lumber? Your nation is huge- must be a lot of forest- despite the vast deserts. How is the logging industry doing? It is very dependent on the cost of ff. Are the enviros trying to lock up the forests to save the planet?
Commercial pine forests are all but allowed to be harvested. Hardwood is classified as old growth and not allowed to be touched. Sheesh stupidity from a country so large which I’m starting to feel embarrassed to be a part of…..
Some old growth should be protected. But most should not. Wood is a resource- one of the only truly renewable resources. Properly managed forests on a large scale will result in greater wildlife diversity. Forestry is a job machine too. Hardwood is generally worth a lot more than softwood on a weight basis- though softwood forests can grow faster. And I should think there must be some mixed forests too.
Logging is now banned in most of Australia’s hardwood forests, despite the fact that most of these forests have now almost completely regrown in the last hundred years. Surely careful logging would be sustainable, if I can use that over-used word,
Yes, mature trees have finished fixing carbon into wood and only make new leaves which rot quickly.
The trees which fix carbon and make wood are new growth. Apparently some reeds and grasses can fix carbon faster and be processed into useful structural material with combustible waste.
Australia needs multiple small to medium modern nuclear fission power plants, construction commencing now.
In late 2025, federal parliament passed reforms to remove a long-standing exemption that allowed native logging to bypass national environmental laws, making it subject to new national standards. Those standards will be slowly tightened and there will be no logging of non commercial plantation wood.
This is another example of why the Australian States should not give up powers to feds. Basically most of the federal parliament is elected by the large woke inner city vote and they have little contact with reality and how things really work. It requires all states to agree to hand-over responsibilities to the Feds and Western Australia has long been anti-Fed and they have blocked a number of powers being handed to the feds. Handover of powers such as School, Hospitals, Police, Electricity, Railways, Industrial Relations, Corporate Governance and State Taxation powers have all been blocked solely by WA or WA and one other state. Western Australia for example is the only state not part of the National Electricity Grid but they made a special relationship so we can feel included and they hope they can lull us into a weak moment to give up the powers.
While the man’s situation is unfortunate, let’s try a different perspective. Here in our town, on the Southern California coastal plain, rents for a smallish one-bedroom apartment in a new building are well over $US2000 per month. A three-bedroom house in our neighborhood rents for more than $US3500 per month. But, then, we are a poor nation, becoming a third-world nation.
Is it more the case, it is not that values have increased, rather that the purchasing power of the $ has decreased?
Another problem with Oz is the cost of labour. If you wanted to build a factory in the early 2000’s you may have been asked to pay around $30k per tradesman per year.
The going rate for a tradesman on an industrial site is now closer to $200k per year. You just can’t afford to build the factories to employ the workers. And don’t forget the mandated 30 minutes a day of unproductive sessions on warm-up exercises, safety observations, “take 5’s” and other pre-task safety assessments. Tying a shoelace is ‘risky’ now, haven’t you heard?
And the craft workers all expect to be a millionaire before barely achieving competence in their tasks. Assuming that you can get them to pass a mandated, ‘random’ drug and alcohol test each week.
Union based demands for continuing increases in the pay rates without a corresponding rise in productivity have not assisted the current situation. Everyone wants to be paid more for doing less. And now the consequences are coming home to roost. If you want a power outlet installed or a tap to stop dripping you can expect to pay a minimum of $150/Hr for travel to and from your house plus a minimum call out, if you get out it for $500 you’ve done well. And that’s for a simple fix. Simple tasks that the government have legislated to ensure only ‘qualified’ people can do.
We used to say that “It won’t end well”, when fronted with preposterous ideas. We can now say, with confidence that “It didn’t end well”.
Our Politicians are fools. They chose the Net Zero madness in chasing green votes and in the process took away our ability to be self sufficient with fossil fuels, and now we are suffering the consequences…
the people in power here in Australia just now were voted into their positions
It is our fault – we have universal suffrage and compulsory voting and the votes are counted by hand. Probably accurate most elections.
I believe the theory that the election in the US was stolen, and by their current rules and practices, could be rigged again.
Here’s the thing, the primary problem that we should look to government to solve is the ones they have created. We have a problem because government took action, the solution is for them to stop and rescind their previous actions. It is that simple.
AI and robots are taking over all jobs. Humans will have to learn to be unemployed in a world of AI and robots.
Humans will no longer need to work in five years.
https://fortune.com/2025/09/09/ai-expert-tech-take-over-jobs-careers-record-unemployment-80-hours-free-time/
Yes, but everything will be free.
Won’t it?
No? I think I can see a problem.
Humans will no longer need to work
I saw a movie about that. Robot was cute.
Preposterous. Get back to basket weaving.
I doubt very much the guy said, he lives in a town 25 miles away. We use kilometers in Australia….
I replaced the name of the town he said with [town 25 miles away].
The dumbest people in Australia live in McMahon. They voted for Blackout. It would be impossible to find anyone less competent than this fool.
Are politicians the problem, or are voters the problem? Looking at the news about Labor’s response to the crisis and it’s staggering how some regular commenters insist that it’s all the “LNP’s” fault – there’s no such federal party and the Coalition has been out of power for almost 4 years, that Albanese is the best prime minister in Australia’s history, and that he and Bowen – minister of something or other, are handling the issue, to simply trust them, and “she’ll be right mate”.
Why doesn’t he park his car at home and get the bus from there ?
Story does not make sense,
I didn’t ask, but he might work an uncomfortable distance from the nearest bus stop. Or maybe he doesn’t want anyone to know how badly he is struggling.
There is a nearby industrial area which stretches between 20 minutes to an hour walk from where he was waiting.
Aye, the fall of the Anglo-American/Ex-British Empire/Commonwealth world…is fast approaching! Much like the fall of the Roman Empire, be ready to learn Mandarin, Cantonese Russian ….and maybe some Arabic 😅
Just a quick note. Lock your fuel cap! There are people systematically syphoning fuel from cars parked in stations or parked alone in obscure locations.
Survival of the sh**iest!