Consider a troubling economic fact: Australia has just handed control of how millions of its citizens travel to events beyond the nation's borders. When shipping through the Strait of Hormuz grinds to a halt, when petrol prices leap 50 cents in a matter of weeks, when a commute suddenly costs double, Australians have no choice but to adapt. And adapt they are, in ways that may reshape society long after the immediate crisis passes.
In Melbourne, a charity shop manager abandoned his car this week, switching to two trains and a walk. At Sydney universities, students are staying home rather than driving to campus. Commuters in Wollongong have ditched vehicles for public transport. These are not anomalies; Australia's petrol prices have now reached a record high average of $2.38 a litre as US and Israeli attacks on Iran triggered retaliatory strikes on major oil facilities, with Iran effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical passageway that carries 20 per cent of the world's oil supply.
The fundamental question is not whether Australians will change how they travel in the short term. They already are. What matters is whether these changes stick. The evidence from 1979 suggests they do.
Fuel rationing measures during the 1979 crisis lasted several weeks and were effective in controlling queues at the bowser while also curtailing panic buying. But more importantly, when fuel remained expensive, behaviour changed permanently. Those shocks changed behaviour; when fuel costs rose and stayed high, people drove less and shifted towards smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. A generation of large family vehicles gave way to nimbler vehicles. Public transport networks suddenly seemed more rational. The landscape of Australian motoring altered, not because of policy mandates but because economics forced the hand.
Current data shows modest shifts emerging already. More than half of surveyed readers indicated they were either considering alternative transport or had already done so. Public transport usage has risen as commuters seek alternatives, prompting calls from unions for fare-free services during the crunch. Lime reported a 10 per cent increase in e-bike and e-scooter trips in Sydney between early March and mid-March. But these early movements are still modest compared to what might lie ahead if fuel prices remain elevated.
The counter-argument deserves serious consideration: perhaps this time will be different. Perhaps the government's demand-reduction measures and released strategic reserves will stabilise prices quickly. The government announced it will temporarily lower fuel quality standards for 60 days to allow higher-sulphur fuel to be sold, which will add roughly 100 million litres to the market each month. Perhaps ships will resume normal patterns by autumn.
But strip away the talking points and what remains is this: Australia imports roughly 90% of its liquid fuel, which means world crude oil prices have a direct impact on pump prices. This crisis differs from past events in that the scale of supply disruptions is larger and there is less spare capacity; the famous 1970s oil shocks affected only around 5–7% of global oil supply, but today around 15% is at risk. The structural vulnerability is worse than it was 50 years ago, not better.
Transport researcher Geoffrey Clifton of the University of Sydney notes that if prices continue to climb, vehicle downsizing and public transport shifts will likely accelerate. This is not prediction; it is consequence. Economics constrains choice more reliably than any policy directive ever could.
History will judge this moment by whether Australia used the shock to build genuine resilience or merely weathered it as a crisis to endure. The transport shifts we see beginning now are not the problem. They are the economy doing what it must. The question is whether Australia's economy, as currently structured, has the resilience to absorb a prolonged period of elevated fuel costs without deeper damage to growth, employment and living standards.