Our leaders are worried about what’s coming. They don’t trust us enough to talk about ‘stage four’

April 2, 2026 — 5:00am

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I’m no DH Lawrence but am struck by the difficulty our political leaders have with the C-word.

Covid was something we were all in together. So we were told, more times than anyone cares to remember. But the collective scarring from that experience, instead of hardening our resolve to tackle the next crisis, appears to have left us incapable of hearing difficult truths.

You can see evidence of this in what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Premier Jacinta Allan are willing to tell us about the escalating global fuel crisis and more particularly, in what they are not willing to say.

The striking omission from the National Fuel Security Plan released this week is what happens next, if things get bad, and what could happen after that, if Australia’s fuel supplies become critically low.

Level three and level four, as they are known, speak vaguely of ongoing fuel supply disruptions requiring government actions. What those actions look like and what the implications are for an economy heavily dependent on road transportation and households that must drive to survive, is not clear.

They have war-gamed these scenarios. Allan and her closest advisers spent most of last weekend and all of Monday morning locked in meetings with her fellow state leaders in contingency planning. It is not breaking National Cabinet solidarity to say they are seriously........

© The Age