COMMENT: The recent scenes of “me first” drivers filling plastic tanks and petrol cans with fuel, just in case anyone else gets a spare droplet, are reminiscent of the vision from six years ago in the first Covid panic when the first supermarket shelves to empty were those displaying toilet rolls.

I don’t recall the screaming trots being a symptom of any of the Covid strains but the desperate need for individuals to own every available square of toilet roll led to punch-ups in Woolworths here in Australia and in scores of stores in other countries.

Ironically, it was the panic buying that caused a shortage where none existed, but once the shelves emptied, the battle for bog-rolls really heated up with supermarkets imposing limits on the number of rolls you could purchase at a time

You have to think that was at the forefront of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s low-key address to the nation last week. 

Just a hint that there was a serious problem would doubtless see an uptick in the sales of petrol-siphoning tubes to go along with the mass purchasing of Bunnings petrol cans.

So what can they do?  The message from the government was that there was no fuel shortage. It was just that a huge chunk of the nation’s stock of fuel was moving around the country in the tanks of our cars, or sitting in cans in garden sheds, waiting for things to get worse.

Now, that situation has changed with the ongoing war against Iran for which, as I write, a ceasefire has just been negotiated. If the Straits of Hormuz open again, as promised, we have to say well done, Donald Trump – you solved a crisis entirely of your making by backing down before your bluff was called.

Getting back to our own glorious leaders, any talk of petrol rationing will have motorists driving from one gas station to the next, just to keep their tanks topped up.  And just in case the Iran ceasefire turns out to be as fragile as Trump’s sense of decency, I have my brilliant solution to curb the next wave of panic buying – reverse rationing.

What would happen if your local petrol station, which is more than likely owned by those purveyors of loo paper – Coles and Woolworths – said you could buy half a tank of gas, minimum.

Or put it another way, if you have 60-litre petrol tank in your car you’re going to be charged for at least 30 litres regardless of how little you put in.

Of course, some people would still pay whatever it takes to keep their tanks topped up. But the excess money profits could pay for the plastic surgery required to remove the permanently smug smiles of all the early adopters of EVs and hybrids.

A version of this editorial appeared with the weekly Flat Chat newsletter last week.