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I don't wish to harp on about one industry, the thread is inflation not energy supply, but if I was to pick an industry where that scenario's most likely then energy would be it.

I say that since there are countless precedents globally for price regulation and I'm also extremely well aware of the politics of the industry in Australia and the cost pressures which exist.

About 40% of all gas and electricity retailers in the UK have failed financially in recent months. They're stuck in a "buy high, sell low" loss making proposition, unable to pass on cost increases to consumers due to a combination of fixed price contracts on the sell side not backed by fixed contracts on the supply side, and government price regulation which has financially blown them up.

There's quite a bit of stuff in the industry at present which is reliant on legacy contracts to be viable. That is, the selling price of gas or electricity is lower than the spot market price of the commodity on the supply side. The only thing that's avoiding a crisis being that there's a contract in place which prevents the fuel supplier passing through the spot price. Trouble is, contracts like that always have an expiry date, you can't forever buy a commodity at a quarter of the prevailing market value that ends at some point.