Why is a servo in Ballina selling diesel fuel for 185 cents a litre, while just up the road in Byron we’re paying 30 cents a litre more?
Why can I shop in Aldi for around half the price I pay in Coles or Woolworths – and it’s even more in IGA? Why does Australia export 75 per cent of the seafood we produce, but import 75 per cent of the seafood we consume?
Why did the cost of shipping a container of goods go up 400 per cent during Covid? Why does Australia export (in containers) most of the pine we grow to China, but import most of the pine we build with from Europe? Why are we exporting our hardwood forests as woodchips and buying so much hardwood from overseas? Why has the cost of building a house gone through the roof?
Why does an exporting island continent like Australia not have its own shipping line, but pays others to ship its goods? Why does the world still cling to unregulated neoliberal economic policies when they are clearly failing us?
The market is a dumb beast, a one-eyed monster with its one eye firmly fixed on profit. Profit at any cost. It should be unsurprising that we are experiencing global inflation. Time for a sustainable revolution.
Mike Balson, Upper Wilsons Creek
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
