The NSW Labor government has found a new way to distract us from its own failures. It is encouraging the public to ‘dob in’ service stations charging what it considers ‘high’ prices for fuel.

In a move straight out of the Covid-era snitch handbook, motorists are being urged to report servos via the FuelCheck app for alleged price gouging. This is not a tough-on-business policy. It is the politics of incompetent governance dressed up as consumer protection.

And it is utterly un-Australian.

Service stations did not create this mess. The current petrol-price pain is the direct result of a multishambles engineered by the Albanese Labor government in Canberra and enthusiastically supported by Chris Minns’ Labor administration in Macquarie Street.

Years of policy hostility to domestic oil and gas exploration, combined with an ideological obsession with Net Zero targets at any cost, have left Australia dangerously exposed to global supply shocks.

When the inevitable price spikes hit, Labor’s answer is not to fix the underlying problem but to sic the public on the local servo owner trying to stay afloat.

Contrast this with Queensland, where Premier David Crisafulli is actually talking sense. He wants real solutions including a national fuel-supply dashboard to expose shortages, and an increase in domestic fuel production.

But the Climate Change try-hards in both Labor governments appear to see every crisis as another opportunity to push the green agenda. More subsidies for EVs that most regional Australians cannot afford, more wind farms that cannot be switched on when the wind doesn’t blow, and more virtue-signalling that does nothing to fill a tank in Crookwell or Cooma.

We should be drilling for oil and gas in our own rich resources.

We should be building a sufficient national fuel stockpile actually located on Australian soil, rather than praying that the US Navy keeps the Strait of Hormuz open so our tankers can make it home.

We should also be playing our part in the Strait of Hormuz rather than flirting with the EU. The EU trade agreement appears to be more about importing debunked European ideas. As a result of their energy policies, everyday prices in Europe are the same as ours, but in Euros. That means double.

Energy security is national security. Pretending otherwise is the luxury of inner-city green-left ideologues who never have to worry about the next fuel bill.

Meanwhile, the service stations, particularly the independent ones, are doing it tough.

Government tinkering with the fuel excise (an archaic tax that is long overdue for reform) may look good in a press release, but it does not magically lower the cost of the stock already sitting in underground tanks that independents had to buy at yesterday’s higher wholesale prices.

These businesses are not welfare stations. They employ locals, pay rates, and keep regional towns alive. Turning them into public enemies because Labor cannot manage the economy is the cheapest form of deflection.

The ‘dob in a servo’ policy is classic Labor misdirection. Demonise legitimate small businesses struggling with the very cost-of-living crisis the government helped create, then pretend you are on the side of ‘ordinary people’.

It is the same playbook we saw during Covid. Encourage neighbours to rat on neighbours, erode trust, and expand the surveillance state one petty report at a time.

Have we forgotten pregnant mother in her pajamas handcuffed by authorities? She was charged with incitement under the Victorian Crimes Act for allegedly encouraging others to breach public health orders. In a Facebook post. How very British.

We would be far better off with a ‘dob in a useless politician’ scheme.

After all, they are the ones who promised cheaper energy, then delivered the opposite. They are the ones who cheered on the closure of coal-fired power stations while refusing to back new gas projects. They are the ones who left us dependent on foreign refineries and volatile international markets.

The Coalition did this too, you say? Too right they did. And how’s that working out for them?

Australians have always prided themselves on a fair go and a healthy scepticism of bureaucratic busybodies. We do not dob in the local servo for daring to pass on costs it cannot absorb.

We expect governments to get the big things right. Secure borders, secure energy, secure fuel supplies. If the government can’t do that, then what is the point?

The social contract, as conceived by thinkers from Locke to Rousseau, is the implicit bargain at the heart of legitimate government. Citizens surrender a measure of their liberty and pay taxes in return for the state’s solemn duty to protect life, property, and the conditions for prosperity. This includes secure energy supplies and a stable cost of living.

Federal and state governments have failed that duty.

Sabotaging domestic oil and gas development and leaving Australia exposed to global price shocks is not merely policy mismanagement. It commits a clear and profound breach of the social contract.

The governed are left holding the bill for ideological incompetence while the government resorts to surveillance and scapegoating. In such circumstances, public anger is not mere grumbling, it is the healthy reaction of a people whose trust has been betrayed.

Until Labor stops treating energy policy as a branch of the climate cult and starts treating it as a matter of national survival, the price at the bowser will keep climbing.

And no amount of dobbing will change that.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you would like to support his writing, or read more of Michael, please visit his website.