💥 Political twist: Fuel crisis exposed — Albanese steps in with new “fuel tsar”

But there’s a step that comes before that – and it’s a very crucial one.

I wouldn’t recommend starting on any journey of self improvement without it.

Because the real first step towards solving a problem is Chris Bowen denying you have one.

Once that happens, as it did with our current petrol crisis, you know you’re in a pickle.

Denial isn’t just a step towards solving a problem, but it’s also the first stage of the grieving process.

And those of you fortunate enough to be able to take your eyes off petrol price boards the last two weeks would have seen our Energy Minister going through the five stages of grieving the reality of the petrol crisis.

First came the denial – there was no crisis.

Everything was chugging along as it should be.

Two weeks ago Chris Bowen told reporters there was nothing to worry about, because Australia had in reserve “36 days’ worth of petrol, 34 days’ worth of diesel, and 32 days’ worth of jet fuel”.

And if you thought that only having just over a month of petrol on hand in case the supply chain completely dry was concerning, then you would be completely wrong – because that number meant we are “currently in excess of the minimum stock obligations”.

Who designed those minimum stock obligations?

This same government.

So we can all rest assured that Labor gave an A to their own homework.

The denial continued on Monday last week, when Bowen told reporters there was “absolutely no reason for panic everything”, let alone buying, as “every single expected delivery of petrol, diesel and jet fuel has arrived on time, on schedule, as expected.”

But farmers across Australia had the audacity to continue to complain it was hard to get petrol in the regions, so Bowen was forced to address the problem again.

And in doing so – moved on to Anger: There was still no problem.

And if there was, it was actually everyone else’s fault.

Of course, he didn’t put it like that, but found a much more roundabout way of saying it when on the ABC:

“We are facing no issues of supply at the moment,” he said, to the amazement of anyone in the regions who had been outside recently.

No, the challenge wasn’t supply, but increased demand – “panic buying or buying extra”.

So really if you were going from petrol station to petrol station trying to find affordable – or even available – petrol, it was your fault there was a problem because you were adding to demand.

The message being that Bowen had been organised – there were no supply issues to Australia.

He was on top of it.

It was those pesky regional Australians who found themselves needing petrol that were experiencing any supply issues.

The problem is of course if you are in regional Australia and you cannot find petrol, there is a supply problem.

The demand may have increased, but supply did not keep up with demand.

And you would be hoping in a well-governed country, there would always be enough supply to keep up with demand caused by fears of conflict in the Middle East.

Because to paraphrase Norm MacDonald, I don’t know if you are all history buffs or not, but there is often conflict in the Middle East.

But still people in the regions complained rather than accepting they were the cause of the problem, meaning Bowen had to still keep thinking about petrol supply.

And so we move to Bargaining: Maybe there wouldn’t be a supply issue (which, remember, didn’t exist) if there was a deal with petrol companies to release more of their product.

On Thursday last week, Bowen announced that he had lowered fuel standards in order to allow higher-sulphur fuel into the Australian market – bringing in an extra 100 million litres of supply a month.

A very strange decision to make if there was no supply issue, but still.

Except The Courier-Mail reported this week that the timeline to get this new petrol into regional communities was still possibly weeks away.

Which means Acceptance was forced upon Bowen, when Anthony Albanese announced there would be a meeting of National Cabinet to solve the petrol issues Chris Bowen had spent so long insisting didn’t exist.

After the meeting on Thursday, Albanese announced a new fuel tsar in Anthea Harris, to “make sure that we maximise the coordinated effort” of all governments in addressing fuel supply.

Appointing someone to a role of making sure the supply of a vital energy source is administered effectively sounds like appointing an Energy Minister.

So it’s interesting Albanese didn’t leave this under the remit of Chris Bowen.

And he went even further than that by making the new energy tsar answerable to his own department, not Bowen’s.

Maybe he feels he needs someone on the case that doesn’t take two weeks to realise something is a problem.