Global oil supply disruptions are a long-overdue lesson for Australia to prioritise greater self-reliance and energy independence in the future, transport and logistics experts say.

Fuel reserves across the nation have reached 39 days for petrol, 29 days for diesel and 30 days for jet fuel, amid ongoing strong demand.

The number of service stations running out of petrol and diesel has dropped, with 312 stations out of 8000 without diesel.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen said there are more than 50 ships carrying fuel on their way from Asian refineries, the US, Mexico and elsewhere.

New orders had more than replaced the cancelled ones and fuel companies were confident about the supply of 3.7 billion litres booked in for April and into May, he said.

While the government must be commended for bolstering fuel stocks, the Australian Logistics Council said it must also look towards supply chain sustainability, resilience and productivity.

“This is the most serious global supply chain interruption to energy ever, and we need to see this in the context of Australia’s future,” chief executive Hermione Parsons told AAP.

Australia is a tiny market at the end destination of major trade routes, and during COVID, the ships stopped coming after being redirected to more lucrative trading routes.

Dr Parsons said the government needed to build sovereign capability.

This had to go beyond just replacing one form of energy, such as imported crude with homeland production.

Renewable diesel, fleet electrification and using more freight rail should also be in the mix.

Australia is under-utilising its freight rail, which uses five times less diesel and has fewer carbon emissions.

 The agriculture sector’s ability to produce feedstock for renewable diesel could help. But there would need to be more refineries.

Matt Barrie, the boss of Loadshift, Australia’s largest online freight marketplace, was sceptical about the federal government’s assurances, saying the maths doesn’t add up.

The 53 ships carrying 3.7 billion litres of fuel en route would not cover the 4.5 billion litres that Australia burns through a month, he said. 

“Those ships don’t even cover four weeks. Has anyone asked what happens in May?” Mr Barrie said.

As Australians mark Easter, Mr Bowen encouraged people to stick to their holiday plans but urged people not to buy more fuel than they needed.

He acknowledged the pain at the bowser as the Iran war continued.

“Even if it ended today, there have been impacts on supply chain that will be with us for weeks and months ahead,” Mr Bowen said.

NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury said oil prices will continue to be heavily impacted by the global events, but assured Australians there will be enough fuel for those heading out over the long weekend.

Nine men are accused over a conspiracy to import tonnes of cocaine and methamphetamine before distributing the drugs across Australia using trucking connections. 

A 10-month investigation by Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police, Australian Border Force and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission resulted in the arrests of the men, eight of them in Victoria and one in Sydney.

The alleged criminals, aged between 31 and 72, have been hit with a variety of charges relating to drug trafficking and seven face the possibility of life in prison if convicted. 

Police were first alerted to the alleged syndicate when four crew members were rescued from a commercial trawler which sank of the Victorian coast. 

The crews’ movements were monitored after police became suspicious about why they had travelled out to sea in bad weather and were without the usual commercial fishing equipment.

It is alleged the group tried to travel into the Bass Strait multiple times to a drop zone where they would have received significant quantities of drugs from a “mother ship” travelling through Australian waters. 

Police say these attempts were unsuccessful.

But four of the men were also charged in relation to the separate seizure of 30 kilograms of methamphetamine in Perth last August and 41kg of cocaine in regional Victoria days later.

It is alleged the syndicate was using connections in the trucking industry to move the drugs between states. 

Organised criminals were sending their business to Australia because of the “insatiable” demand for illicit drugs and a willingness by the community to pay top dollar for them, AFP Detective Superintendent Ray Imbriano said.

“These are not harmless substances and apart from the health consequences, drug importations fuel violence between rival gangs in our suburbs,” he said.

“This violence too often leaves innocent Australians caught in the crosshairs.”

When Pat Carberry finally climbs down from the cabin of his harvester this season there will be mixed emotions.

He’s farmed cotton at his Cardale property, near Narrabri in NSW’s northwest, for 59 of his 97 years.

But 2026 will be the last time he and his family hit the fields.

The ending of a century-old family partnership, the rising cost of machinery and fertiliser, and water licensing issues have all contributed to a decision to sell up and pursue other endeavours.

Cardale and its operation look vastly different since Pat’s father, Stan, bought the land upon returning from Gallipoli and the battlegrounds of the Middle East in 1917.

Even so, modern cotton farming is not a simple task for the uninitiated.

“You might think we’ve got to the stage of it being idiot-proof but it’s not quite that,” Pat tells AAP.

“Over the years, we’ve increased our yields by six or 700 per cent but so has all our expenses.”

Pat’s father Stan was wounded more than a dozen times during his World War I service but it didn’t stop him setting up a farm on land obtained on a soldier settlement scheme.

After three-and-a-half decades of wheat and sheep farming, Stan and his children jumped on the back of a 1960s wave of cotton-growing started by a pair of Americans looking for fresh overseas ground.

Since the middle of that decade, Pat and his family have been at the forefront of Australia’s cotton industry, one of the most highly regarded cotton crops in the world.

“We’ve been through insects and that was partly solved by genetically modified cotton,” Pat says.

“I used to have 100 cotton chippers out there, and that’s been partly solved by genetically modifying protein … so we could spray Roundup over the top and kill weeds and not the cotton.”

Four generations of Carberrys have lived and worked at Cardale with Pat’s son Mike and grandson Samuel taking over most of the day-to-day in recent years.

But Pat can’t keep himself away from the action, especially during the harvest.

He’s not afraid to get behind the wheel of one of the farm’s modern cotton pickers that have slashed the amount of manpower needed during harvest.

“He comes out every day for smoko and we do a drive around the farm,” Mike says.

“He says he’s been to work and I do say to him that he uses that word loosely.”

Despite the gentle ribbing, Mike wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We love having him out around the farm; what’s in Dad’s head is so valuable to us and I’ve never lost sight of that,” he adds.

For most of its history in Australia, cotton has been littered with family farming stories like Pat’s.

But with cost pressures on essentials like diesel and fertilisers and the rising influence of corporate conglomerates, small operators are battling.

“The family farm is struggling to take the highs and the lows, particularly the lows,” Mike says.

“Our expenses have just got out of control and we’re price-takers.

“The fuel situation at the moment or the fertiliser situation, we can’t pass that on.”

A key driver of increasing yield has been Australian scientists and breeders making the industry more efficient.

Excessive water and pesticide use are environmental criticisms often levelled at cotton farming, particularly during drought.

But the chief executive of Cotton Australia says the industry has relied on science and technology to make giant leaps to address those concerns.

“Swarm bots spray the cops, they’ve got cameras on there that only spray when there’s a weed underneath … that’s reducing herbicide use by up to 80 per cent,” Adam Kay tells AAP.

“We’ve doubled our water use efficiency, we’re producing twice as much cotton from a litre of water as we did 20 years ago.”

As a natural fibre, cotton also has significant environmental advantages over its main competitors, Mr Kay says.

“Your polyesters and lycras … they don’t break down and they’re made from oil,” he says.

Almost all of the cotton grown in Australia is shipped overseas due to the lack of local spinning infrastructure and cheaper wages abroad.

Bonds underwear was one of the final major textile manufacturers to operate a factory using local cotton but their last facility near Wollongong shut its doors in 2010.

Mike’s pedigree and intimate knowledge of the industry has meant he’s long been at the forefront of Australia’s mission to improve standards for growers.

The MyBMP initiative is a set of industry standards for local producers to ensure workplace health and safety and provide buyers certainty about environmental protections.

Mike was involved from its conception and says standardising the processes across the industry will keep Australian cotton desirable for years to come.

“We’re trying to get people wanting to use 100 per cent Australian cotton in their products,” he says.

Back home at Cardale, the only focus for now is securing a good return for its 59th and last harvest under the Carberry ownership.

While Pat and his clan won’t be there, the farm’s immediate future is secure with the Carberrys selling to a neighbouring seed company after the family partnership that ran the farm for 107 years broke up.

But Pat isn’t quite sure just what he’s going to do now there won’t be a farm with his family working the fields.

“We’re not too sure where we’re going to go from here,” he concedes.

“We’re going to pick up our football and go home.”

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is planning a visit ‌to Australia, seeking to discuss supply chains for ‌rare earth elements and co-operation on safe navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, the Nikkei newspaper reports.

Takaichi’s initiative comes shortly after her government signed a rare ‌earths ⁠deal with France, which Japan’s ​public broadcaster NHK reported on Wednesday.

Japan and other countries have been aiming to diversify away from the supply chain largely dominated by China, the world’s ⁠largest rare ‌earths ​producer and supplier.

The Japanese and Australian leaders ​will also discuss ‌the “free and open Indo-Pacific” initiative, the ​Nikkei report said.

The attempt to lessen dependence on China has allowed Australian miners ​to ​secure deals, with ​Lynas agreeing a potential rare ‌earths deal with South Korean firm LS Eco Energy last week.

Australian Minister for Resources Madeleine King said on Thursday that France was among the countries ​that were set to invest in Australian critical ​mineral projects.

When Tasmania became the first state to roll the clocks forward in summer 59 years go, not everyone was happy.

“Leave God’s time alone,” one person wrote to an ABC program on daylight saving in 1970.

“If God had wanted us to wake up in the dark, he would have given us cats’ eyes to help us do it more satisfactorily,” another said.

Today, daylight saving might barely be noticeable thanks to the unflinching accuracy of our smartphone clocks, which will diligently repeat an hour on Easter Sunday as states roll back to standard time.

But in the bowels of a sprawling lab complex nestled in dense Sydney bushland, Australia’s chief time boffin Michael Wouters attends to the trillion-dollar global task of keeping accurate time with atomic clocks.

Instead of a pendulum, these blast caesium atoms with microwaves more than nine billion times a second.

A luxury wristwatch might set you back ten grand, but these machines each cost up to $140,000.

“They’re not all that expensive considering their lifetime,” Dr Wouters told AAP.

There is no central world clock, meaning co-ordinated universal time (UTC) – the global standard – is just the average of hundreds of atomic clocks in government labs.

Their time is broadcast with the help of people like Harlan Stenn, who manages the open-source software distributing time to computers from his spare bedroom in Oregon, mostly by himself.

Mr Stenn is barely audible over the six-foot rack of computers towering and whirring over his desk.

“You wouldn’t believe my electricity bill,” he told AAP.

Down in California, Australian-born Kim Davies helps oversee the time zone database, which translates Dr Wouters’ UTC into more than 300 local offsets.

“(The system) is notable for the fact it’s not notable,” he told AAP.

“It’s silent, and automatic, and that’s what’s most of interest to it.”

He says governments aren’t always proactive in reporting time zone changes, including daylight saving, with people’s unpredictability sometimes baffling computers.

“Time zone policy has been set by very human things,” he says.

Airlines, banks, telecoms operators and makers of precisely calibrated measuring instruments also need atomic time, which skips a beat only once every 100 million years.

Nevertheless, there is a market for better clocks.

“There are about 400 clocks that contribute to UTC … ours are very ordinary,” Dr Wouters says.

“There are new clocks that are about 100 to 1000 times better.”

Time marches relentlessly forward, but these clocks – more than 20 years old and using 1950s technology – are also monuments to time stood still.

Even the furniture in the National Measurement Institute, where Dr Wouters has served for 29 years, looks frozen in the 1970s, the complex itself a retro brutalist icon.

And all those years are still not enough for scientists to settle on what time actually is, according to Dr Wouters.

“It’s one of those things … physicists haven’t quite agreed on,” he told AAP.

He won’t be drawn on that thorny issue himself, content to tinker away at the system which keeps modern life in sync.

Thanks to him, the Stenn software and the Davies database, the twice-yearly need to adjust watches has reduced to an intermittent nuisance for the few who maintain analog wristwear.

Not that you’ll see time moving on the wrist of Australia’s chief timekeeper.

“It’s a point of honour in standards of time and frequency not to have a watch,” Dr Wouters said.

When not in sight of an atomic clock, he checks the time on his phone.

Record high fuel prices have not translated into Easter holiday booking cancellation spree at holiday parks and resorts, a major tourism operator says. 

NRMA, which owns about 50 holiday parks and resorts, said there was only a slight drop-off in bookings.

“There have been some cancellations but not at the levels initially feared,” the association’s spokesperson Peter Khoury told AAP.

“That’s to be expected with record high fuel prices.”

A survey conducted in March by the motoring group found that nearly a quarter of drivers at 24 per cent are combining trips to make the tank last a bit longer.

More than 40 per cent polled were also cutting back on driving by between 10 to 30 per cent.

Mr Khoury said cautious consumer confidence was buoyed by the federal government assuring the public of its supply strategy.

“There’s been more certainty around supply, the cut in the excise may have encouraged to people to get in the car and people have started to regulate their behaviour,” he said.

Transport for NSW senior official Rob Austin said the Easter break was traditionally one of the busiest times despite cost of living concerns.

“We know Easter road trips may look a bit different this year for many people, but we are still expecting lots of extra vehicles, especially on key corridors to the regions,” he said.

Fuel price spikes around long weekends reflect both predictable demand cycles and behavioural responses, Western Sydney University academic Amanda Craft said.

“Research on panic buying shows that when motorists anticipate shortages or price rises, they tend to fill up earlier and more often,” she explained. 

“This can disrupt holiday travel at the margins, with some drivers facing limited availability or needing to detour – even though the broader system isn’t actually short on fuel at this stage.”

There were 182 service stations without diesel and 48 without unleaded petrol in NSW.

In Victoria 76 service stations had run out of diesel, and 75 were without in Queensland.

“Most of the shortages we’re seeing are in diesel,” Energy Minister Chris Bowen said on Friday.

“Refineries and petrol companies are working hard to refill that stock over the Easter break.”

Mr Bowen asked Australians planning a road trip for the Easter break to fill up in the city beforehand, to help out regional and rural areas which were experiencing greater fuel shortages.

Drivers will get an additional 5.7 cents a litre off their fuel until June 30 as part of a deal between federal and state governments to forgo some GST revenue, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Thursday.

The move follows a cut to the fuel excise, reducing wholesale petrol and diesel costs by around 26 cents a litre, for a total of 32 cents off.

Aussies could be forced to spend a basket-full this Easter long weekend, with rising fuel prices prompting many to stay closer to home.

But during such uncertain times, connection with others and small indulgences could trump cost-of-living anxieties.

More than 40 per cent of Australians had already cancelled or scaled back their Easter travel plans during the fuel crisis, data from the Tourism and Transport Forum for late March showed.

Cutting back on travel was natural as rising fuel costs directly hit the hip pocket, said Amanda Craft, from Western Sydney University Business School.

But rather than abandon Easter plans entirely, many will simply look less further afield, she says.

“Easter holidays have been planned probably months in advance, they coincide with school holidays, and people see their families,” Dr Craft told AAP.

“It’s not something people are going to want to give up completely, but they’re going to try to minimise the costs as much as possible.”

Aussies are on average actually set to spend more this Easter than in previous years.

The 56 per cent of Australians who said they will spend money this Easter, on average will fork out $2019 – compared to $1556 the year before, research by consumer group Finder showed.

Travel makes up the bulk of that expected spend at $1488, compared to $1005 the previous Easter – while anticipated spending on chocolate is slightly less than last year, at $62 in 2026 compared to $68 previously.

While inflation and rising travel costs likely explain much of the increase, Bond University consumer behaviour expert Belinda Barton says there could be more to the story.

“It’s somewhat confusing when you’re in a circumstance like we are at the moment where we’ve got war, we’ve got inflation and we’ve got cost of living,” she told AAP.

Dr Barton said people may be prioritising community and family over other anxieties that would otherwise lead them to tighten the belt.

“So when you’ve got things like war and a lot of doom and gloom out there, people tend to prioritise living in present, which may contradict feelings of anxiety around the cost of living,” she told AAP.

But prioritising family and enjoyment doesn’t have to mean spending big, with financial planning academic Michelle Cull from Western Sydney University urging a more “old-fashioned” approach.

She pointed to Australia’s many great free public facilities and outdoor areas.

“Picnics are great if you’re getting together with extended family – maybe you even have games and things you could set up,” she told AAP.

“The old egg and spoon, for example, or the three-legged race. These things don’t cost anything and can actually be quite a lot of fun.”

Foodbank chief executive Kylea Tink urged those anxious about putting food on the table this Easter to reach out, even if they think there are others more in need.

“Services like Foodbank are here to help make sure people don’t have to be brought to their knees to be able to continue to do what they want to do within their family,” she told AAP.

Hundreds of service stations around Australia are out of petrol leading into the Easter long weekend but a reduction in fuel prices will give some hope to anxious travellers.

Fuel supplies and imports are remaining stable, Australian Institute of Petroleum chief executive Malcolm Roberts says, with the spike in demand for petrol and diesel at the start of the Iran war beginning to ease.

Of the more than 8000 service stations around the country, 653 – or eight per cent – are missing one or more grades of fuel.

“That’s been a bit of an improvement from where it has been, but there’s undoubtedly local short-term problems,” Mr Roberts told AAP.

“The distribution system’s been working overtime for a month now.

“There’s essentially no more tankers, no more drivers than what we had four weeks ago.”

Motorists will get an additional 5.7 cents a litre off their fuel until June 30 as part of a deal between federal and state governments to forgo some GST revenue, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Thursday.

The move follows a cut to the fuel excise, reducing wholesale petrol and diesel costs by around 26 cents a litre.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor used a video address on Thursday night to call for a federal budget response to the fuel crisis and again urged the government to be more transparent about the availability of petrol and diesel supplies.

“In a crisis, Australians deserve a government that’s transparent and gives you the facts every day,” he said.

“The prime minister and treasurer must use the upcoming budget not just to respond to this crisis, but to set our country up for the future.”

While the price drops may provide some relief, the tourism sector remains under pressure, with motorists anxious about the cost and availability of fuel in some destinations.

Caravan parks more than a few hours away from the city were suffering the most from a decline in bookings, Caravan Industry Association general manager of research and insights Peter Clay told AAP.

“(Travellers are asking) is there fuel available? Is there diesel available where I’m going?” he said.

The cancellation rate for Easter normally sits at about 30 per cent, he said, and that had ticked up this year because of the fuel crisis.

Hotels have also taken a hit as Australians and foreigners cut back on travel, facing a decline in bookings of up to 10 per cent across the east coast capital cities compared to the same time in 2025, Accommodation Australia boss James Goodwin said.

“If you can afford it, if you are in a position to be able to travel, then don’t put off that travel,” he told AAP.

“Just make sure that you’re looking around, that you’re going to a place where you know that you can get the fuel, or make sure you fill up before you leave.”

Australia must join partner nations in helping pull the US and Iran back from the “brink” in a bid to end the war and reopen a crucial oil corridor, military analysts warn.

In a televised address from the White House on Thursday, US President Donald Trump said the core objectives of the war in Iran were “nearing completion” and that the regime was no longer a threat.

“They are decimated both militarily and economically and in every other way,” he said during a 20-minute speech.

In response, Iran has disrupted maritime navigation which has sent oil prices soaring.

Mr Trump called on allies of the US that do depend on oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz to take action.

“The countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Straight must take care of that passage,” he said.

“They must grab it and cherish it. They could do it easily. 

“We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on.”

Defence analyst Marcus Hellyer, head of research at Strategic Analysis Australia, said a modest military contribution from Canberra in the form of a warship would be unlikely to have any impact on the conflict in the Middle East.

“The worst case is a nuclear war, we do need to find a solution and countries need to pull Israel, the US and Iran back from the brink,” he told AAP.

He said Australia didn’t have many ships it could send to the region due to previous governments’ mismanagement of the defence acquisition process.

“Our cupboard is quite bare,” the analyst said.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has called for Australia to consider any requests made by the US to send military assets to the Middle East.

Labor has repeatedly insisted no formal request has been made by the US.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese questioned the need for a prolonged war in an address to the National Press Club on Thursday.

US President Donald Trump’s threat to send Iran “back to the Stone Ages” has rattled equity markets.

If he follows through, Australia is at risk of entering a recession.

In a prolonged war scenario, modelled by Oxford Economics Australia, the nation’s gross domestic product would contract 0.3 per cent in the June quarter and fall a further 0.8 per cent in the three months to September.

That would be Australia’s sharpest economic slowdown, excluding COVID-19, since the early 1990s.

Oxford Economics’ baseline forecast is for the war to last two months, meaning the Strait of Hormuz would reopen to ships carrying oil, gas, fertiliser and other crucial commodities at the end of April.

“However, opportunities for de-escalation are narrowing, risking a more prolonged conflict,” Oxford Economics Australia economist Harry McAuley said in a report published on Thursday, shortly after Mr Trump’s hawkish televised primetime speech.

In the prolonged war scenario, oil prices would stay above $US150 a barrel for four months alongside shortages of energy products, pushing global inflation near 7.7 per cent.

The benchmark crude oil price has yet to exceed $US120 a barrel during the conflict, but following Mr Trump’s speech spiked five per cent to $US105 a barrel.

The ASX200 lurched 1.06 per cent lower.

Traders saw little in Mr Trump’s speech that would suggest the Strait of Hormuz would open any time soon.

Although Australia is a net energy exporter, it is highly exposed to the global oil shock as it imports about 85 per cent of its petrol, diesel and jet fuel supplies from overseas, Commonwealth Bank senior economist Ryan Felsman said.

Australia is more dependent on diesel than most major economies, in part due to its vast geography requiring a greater share of trucking, and a large share of mining and agriculture in the economy.

“Energy-intensive agriculture, transport, construction and mining sectors could incur a material hit from persistent fuel shortages and rising input costs,” Mr Felsman said.

As well as the hit from higher input costs, Australian industries will be impacted by weaker economic activity.

CBA continues to expect the Reserve Bank to hike the cash rate again in May to get on top of inflation expectations.

NAB economist Michael Hayes also predicts a 25-basis point lift in May, largely driven by the backdrop of high domestic inflation pressures and a still tight labour market.

Job vacancies rose 2.7 per cent over the three months to February to 338,000 – the highest level in 12 months – the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on Thursday.