In Moscow 1992, according to former ABC journalist in Soviet Russia Monica Attard, ‘the cost of everything – a loaf of bread, a piece of sausage, a kilo of sugar – had risen 500 per cent’.

The authorities had promised price rises closer to 20 per cent, according to Attard. Her weighty, courageous history of those dismal times within Russia: which way paradise? documents the insanity of the Soviet system in turmoil.

‘The problem was no longer a shortage of goods. It was inflation, indeed hyper-inflation, on goods. By the end of February 1992, two months after price liberalisation, goods sat on shop shelves in unprecedented abundance because no one could afford to buy them.’

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, and Australia, in the worst hyperinflation since the Whitlam excesses, is repeating history. Extravagant promises were made, only to abjectly fail as the government tottered into an increasingly narrowed spectrum of options, each hurting bewildered ordinary Australians who saw their house payments soar beyond their modest means.

Attard records her experiences in that Moscow – and, remember, she was one of those privileged foreigners, able to shop at the hard currency stores (Attard kept her Russian friends and news sources in sugar and other hard-to-obtain consumer goods), until even the hard currency shops, anticipating a rush on their goods from the infamous Soviet elite, made it illegal to buy with cash, only credit cards.

Something very similar, increasing shortages of goods usually plentiful on shelves, is happening across Australia today. The situation here with petrol is not quite as bad as for Monica in Moscow, queuing at 3 or 4 am at her local petrol station so that she didn’t have to wait three of four daylight hours, but we’re a big country and electric cars just don’t fit the bill for moving loads across country.

Thankfully, Australia is able to feed its people: the CSIRO, where this writer once worked, has studied extensively the problems of food security but if we don’t support our farmers and primary producers, we will drive them to greater despair, greater sacrifices, after the flood damage to much cropping land in New South Wales. The government must start cutting down on its extravagant ambitions, and start facing bleak truths.

There are plenty of Marxist-influenced economists in government ranks and departments right now. Just remind them of what happened in Russia in the early 90s.