The United States, the country we’ve spent 75 years assuming would show up, has just effectively told us that keeping the Strait open is not their problem anymore. Not in so many words. Trump doesn’t do so many words. But the signal is there: talk of withdrawal in weeks, and on fuel the message to allies is basically, if you want oil, go and get it yourselves. So the PM moves. His first national address (the last national address Australia got was six years ago). Short, pre-recorded, simulcast across every network…

And it had the energy of a Fiverr-sourced infomercial.

Soft lighting, gentle tone, carefully rehearsed hand gestures. Like a worried teacher reminding the class to share the toys.

Play your part. No hoarding. Fill up normally over Easter. Think of the truckies and the nurses. We'll get through this the Australian way. Together.

Ahhh… Prime Minister, Australia is staring down a 30-50% diesel supply gap and your response was to cut fuel excise by 26 cents? That does absolutely nothing about what was once referred to as a “temporary disruption” becoming a new long-term, and very real permanent problem.

Meanwhile our superannuation is sitting in a balanced fund that's about to eat a global oil shock. The Dallas Fed modelled this: even one quarter of Strait closure wipes 2.9% off global GDP. Equities are repricing. Your super isn't safe just sitting there (it's just losing money more politely than the fuel tank).

So here's an idea that's so obvious it's almost annoying no one in Canberra has said it yet. Let Australians pull $10-12k from super. Or a percentage cap. But ONLY for an EV, bikes, solar panels, or a home battery. Subsidies are inflationary, it only draws a doomsday scenario closer, but Super? That’s deflationary.

Right now the whole country is fighting over the same shrinking pool of diesel. Every dollar the government throws at this adds more demand into a system that's already 30-50% short. A fast-tracked band-aid that ends at $4 for diesel and bare shelves.

But condition withdrawals on energy assets and you flip the equation. Suddenly, you're not adding demand, you're deleting it. Every EV or Electric bike is one less car at the bowser. Every solar install is one less house pulling from a grid running on expensive gas. You're not hugging a tree. You're triaging a national supply crisis by removing yourself from the queue.

Pull $10k. Install solar. Save $2k a year on power. That's effectively a 20% annual return on money you were never going to touch for 30 years anyway, sitting in a fund that's about to go backwards.

500,000 households do this and you remove 5-6 million litres a day from fuel demand. That's 10-20% of the entire diesel gap. No ships. No diplomacy. No new pipelines. Just Australians doing one practical thing that happens to also save them money.

We've done this before. During COVID, 3 million people pulled $37.8 billion from super with zero conditions attached. They spent it on whatever. Research confirmed it did almost nothing for financial resilience.

But this time, if you condition it you can turn a crisis into infrastructure that pays for itself for 25 years. Albanese himself admitted the months ahead "may not be easy", but I’m sorry, a 26 cent excise cut is not a plan.

Let’s come up with some better ones.