The National Cabinet has established a taskforce to co-ordinate the distribution of fuel to areas of need and has raised the prospect of rationing if the Middle East conflict drags on. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese questioned whether there was any need for the US and Israel to continue hostilities against Iran, given the objective of denying Iran the ability to develop nuclear weapons had been achieved. As yesterday’s meeting progressed, the competition watchdog announced an investigation into allegations of anti-competitive behaviour by major fuel suppliers Ampol, BP, Mobil and Viva Energy.

Listen to today's episode 🎧 

News in brief

The economy added nearly 49,000 jobs last month, but the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 per cent, as more people looked for work. While in January there was a surge in full-time jobs and a drop in part-time roles, it was the opposite in February. Last month, part-time employment surged by 79,000 while full-time employment fell by 30,000.

The ongoing war in the Middle East pushed up oil and gas prices yesterday, and that hit the local sharemarket hard. The S&P/ASX200 closed down 1.7 per cent. Not helping sentiment was commentary from the US Federal Feserve Chair Jerome Powell who made it clear that the economic outlook was very uncertain.

International airfares are on the rise, with the head of Qantas International warning they could end up much higher, as the carrier reviews ticket prices at least once a fortnight.

The Australian has released list of richest people, and for the first time in eight years, the combined wealth of the top 250 Aussies has fallen. That’s because the value of Atlassian founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar’s total wealth is down $35 billion over the last year.

The city housing the world’s largest gas export plant, in Qatar, has been targeted in the war in the Middle East. Raffan Industrial City was the subject of missile attacks that came as Israel and the US bombed a key Iranian gas field. It triggered a surge in oil and gas prices and also a split between the two countries.

Fear-o-meter

The one thing rich people hate more than being on a rich list, is falling off a rich list. It is a matter of pride, and perhaps a lot of ego.

Many years ago, I was editor-in-chief of BRW magazine, the original Rich List magazine. The Australian’s current Rich List editor, John Stensholt, was doing the job back then and he’s the best in the business of finding rich Aussies.

Stensholt would hand out names, and we had to ring the person and double check the figures. The responses tended to clump in three types.

Those that wouldn’t speak to us. Those that were meticulous and would go through every line item ensuring we had the right value (which wasn’t always easy when it was a luxury home in Melbourne or Sydney).

And those that had no idea what they were worth but were interested in what we thought. More than once I reminded a “richie” of an asset they’d forgotten they’d owned. And that asset could be worth tens of millions of dollars.

What I realised is that rich lists underestimate wealth, because they can only include publicly known information. There are plenty of very rich people out there.

- Sean Aylmer

Fear & Greed Q+A today

Aussie businesses are under pressure - rising costs, tighter margins and the need to embrace AI. But with employees reportedly spending just 27% of their time on skilled work, the problem isn't necessarily capacity - it's visibility.

 

“The question that we think most businesses should be asking is not what their team needs to be doing, but what they shouldn’t be doing. And to understand that, you need to break the role down into those tasks and activities.

 

And you’ll find that there are sometimes dozens, sometimes even hundreds of individual activities within a role, and each of those has different cost profiles and different automation opportunities within them.

 

And so that’s kind of the trick — once you identify those activities which are remote-capable within a role, you can actually do them at a lower cost, maybe do them more efficiently or effectively with a specialist.”

 

Outrun Global has put together a guide for Fear & Greed listeners: The Top 10 Tasks to Optimise for the Biggest Impact.

Greed-o-meter

Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar have suffered a massive drop in their wealth. Last year, they were each worth more than $29 billion - but with AI hitting the value of their company, their individual wealth has fallen to less than $12 billion. And according to the Australian newspaper's The List: Richest 250 - which is published today - they've dropped right out of the top ten wealthiest people in the country. 

Source: 'The List: Richest 250' in The Australian

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