It has been rather cynically amusing watching all the dumber and more reactionary members of the public respond to the rising cost of petrol. They almost universally behave as though cheap petrol is an inalienable human right, rather than something that is controlled by the markets under the control of simple supply/demand economics.
They don’t seem to understand that oil is a finite resource, and that we have been lucky to have petrol as cheap as we have had it for so long (most Europeans pay about double what we do in Australia, and have done so for years). They also don’t seem to understand that this is not something that the government can (or even should) intervene with to alter prices.
They also clearly don’t have a clue as to what the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) actually does (which is to prevent price fixing, insider trading, or other anti-competitive corporate behaviors), or that just because prices are rising it does not by default mean that the petrol companies are colluding or price gouging.
I really wonder what they will do when significant supply side restrictions (ie. when oil fields start running dry, and prospecting stops finding new fields) start affecting oil prices…