Well, well, well… It didn’t even take the Albanese government 24 hours to fold under pressure from the Opposition to halve the fuel excise.

We say ‘the Opposition’ even though it was One Nation that started applying pressure before Angus Taylor and the Coalition joined in.

Not that Albanese had a choice. Cutting excise was the only decision that made sense as industry warned of a major hike to food costs.

And yet as late as Friday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers was insisting that cutting fuel excise was not on the table and that the government had not done any costing on it.

What are we to believe this morning … that Labor magically completed its costings on the back of a napkin over breakfast, or that they jerked their knee after being hit by a social media hashtag?

‘While Australia’s fuel supply outlook remains secure in the near term, we need to be very clear with Australians that the longer this war goes on, the worse the impacts will be. The government understands that people are really worried, and we know the cost pressures are very real as the impact of the war on the other side of the world plays out right here.’

The Prime Minister’s words are a tad vague.

Essentially, he is whispering, ‘Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!’ under his breath as pollsters wait outside the local servo, asking Aussies what they think of his leadership.

‘We really also want to encourage Australians who can to take public transport to help save fuel for the areas and industries that need it…’ added Albanese.

Maybe the Prime Minister should pick up the phone and have a little chat to New South Wales State Premier Chris Minns about the extensive trackwork over the weekend with ‘buses replace trains’.

Tasmania and Victoria, meanwhile, have offered free public transport.

The priority is to keep the economy dragging its battered corpse forward over the Easter holiday period and to lessen the shock on tourism and hospitality.

‘Easter is an important time for tourism, destinations, for jobs, they rely upon that,’ said Albanese.

Cancelling Easter would also be somewhat of a popularity killer for Labor right when the two jaws of conservatism – One Nation and the Coalition – have come within snapping range.

Albanese is obviously aware that talk of National Cabinet and extra emergency powers has set the public on edge.

‘What we want to do, to be very clear and explicit, we want the country to not go through what it went through in Covid. What we’re talking about here is responsible action, putting forward a plan and working with Australians, working with different levels of government, working with each other.’

The Treasurer, for his part, didn’t look particularly comfortable when he was brought over to make a comment on the policy backflip:

‘What we’re announcing today will reduce the cost of a 65-litre tank by about $19. So it is a substantial cost-of-living relief. It is timely, it is temporary, and it is responsible. The cost of what we are announcing today is $2.55 billion, depending, of course, on the amount of demand in the system. But the initial costing is $2.55 billion, and the revenue forgone by delaying the increase in the heavy vehicle road user charge is about another $53 million.’

Here’s an idea: How about the government stops expecting to profit from its mistakes?

In no way should the Treasury be allowed to rake in cash for the structural and logistical failures of national fuel security. Let’s call this discount a ‘fine’ on government mismanagement.

And please, stop trying to sell this to the Australian people as if it were a ‘cost’ to the Budget.

Let’s hope Labor remembered to put price controls on the fuel supply network to guarantee the discount is passed on to consumers and not rapidly absorbed by distributors. To that end, the ABC reports that the Treasurer has written to the consumer watchdog.

For those who were starting to relax, it might be worth reading the fine print on the government’s four-step fuel security program.

‘All governments will look for practical measures to help you reduce your use. All Australians are in this together, and we need to play our part to help fuel get to where it’s needed most.’

I’m sure I’ve heard that sort of phrasing somewhere before.

This fuel action plan was released with four levels. Australia is already considering moving into the third stage of ‘taking targeted action’. The only move left after that is ‘protecting critical services’ and the unwritten bonus tier of ‘panic!’.

In the back of Labor’s mind, they must be thinking about how this will play at the next election when the war is over.

Labor used the Coalition government’s economic mishandling of Covid against it and have successfully pinned the debt bubble on the Coalition’s performance. This gave Labor breathing room to make a whole new set of mistakes.

One day the Albanese government will be judged.

Fuel shortages are one of the most dangerous insecurities a nation can have. It is a logistical problem, not an ideological narrative.

The government failed to plan, and now they must hustle.

Markets will relax, prices will settle, and supply will be restored only when the government does its job and secures a steady line of container ships.

They cannot regulate themselves out of this mess.

Allow me to finish on this thought.

Consider how many bureaucrats are on the payroll in Canberra.

None of them, not a single one, had a proper emergency fuel plan ready to go for a war situation.

No pre-existing contracts with allies. No automatic market controls. No agreements between servos and carriers. Nothing.

Just the faint hope that globalisation would hold steady forever.