Tasmania has 40 state MPs and 17 federal, who are paid pretty well, up to $250,000 a year for backbenchers, but apart from a few standouts, I'm not sure what they do all day under lockdown to justify the high salary.

Baking bread, sending out for takeaways, home schooling the kids and taking the dog for a walk.

They would say they were flat out and they're supposed to be flat out, but the Rome around them continues to burn.

The only backbencher I have a default level of faith in is Senator Jacqui Lambie.

The rest are in various stages of a comfortable pause.

How Rome burns.

Petrol prices are too high. Temporarily we might not be driving as much as we used to, but while world crude oil prices have crashed, poor old sucker Tassie keeps paying up to 20 cents a litre more than other states.

Because we're on an island the Australian Government provides around $200 million a year or more for sea freight and sea passenger subsidies, but most Bass Strait transit activity is by air.

When the good old days of air travel return Tasmanians wanting to fly across Bass Strait are stuck with an unfair flag fall before the trip even starts.

This is rampant discrimination.

Either we're part of Australia or we're not.

The freight subsidy for north and south traffic is insufficient to compensate for the lack of a national highway connecting Tasmania to Victoria and we get nothing for the added expense of air travel.

Think of the billions being spent connecting major mainland cities.

Coronavirus: All the latest updates on COVID-19 for Tasmania

The Commonwealth spends peanuts on a dad's army defence activity in Tasmania and while we are not exactly at the foxhole end of our nation's defensive layers, other states are wallowing in cascades of defence spending.

South Australia hit the jackpot when Prime Minister Bob Hawke gave the South Australian Bannon Labor Government the submarine construction contract in the 1980s, for political reasons.

Now SA will partly construct the $90 billion new contract, for submarines that won't be commissioned for another 15 to 20 years.

This is the biggest defence contract ever. Big enough to be shared between states.

There's a whole generation of construction time for the nation to tool up and plenty of time for our local federal and state pollies to scream blue murder.

They're not overly stretched. There's one Tasmanian federal or state MP for every 9000 Tasmanians.

In Victoria the ratio is one MP per 35,000 and in South Australia one MP per 19,000.

Media releases and speeches used by federal and state backbenchers are drafted by staff in departments and by press secretaries.

The same staff organise all public events.

All MPs have to do is show up, either with their pre-paid airline ticket or in their fully-maintained private plate vehicle.

Assume cabinet ministers have gruelling workloads. Peter Gutwein and Sarah Courtney look tired all the time.

They would be working around the clock fighting the virus and earning every cent of their salaries.

Beyond cabinet, politics is peachy.

The virus is dominating the news cycle, as it should, which doesn't leave much in the way of activity for our backbenchers, unless they care to do some volunteer work.

Petrol is a crusty old scab in Tasmania, but like the unprecedented pandemic the rest of the world is in an unprecedented cycle of cheap fuel prices, except Tasmania.

The ACCC is a toothless disappointment. Until our regulatory agencies have real clout to fight price gouging it is up to our politicians to take up the fight.

To all our backbenchers, time-serving your way through COVID-19, now is the time to step up and push for falling oil prices to be promptly passed on to motorists in Tasmania.

If oil companies and resellers can instantly ramp up the price when world crude oil prices rise they can instantly ramp it down when crude oil prices fall

The ACCC should be empowered to properly scrutinise the market in Tasmania and ensure petrol pricing is fair.

The ACCC is not expected to regulate petrol pricing but it ought to be able to ensure market fluctuations are reflected at the bowser.

Why should Victorians be able to pay less than a dollar a litre while in parts of Tasmania the price is up to $1.30?

Tasmanians having to pay a premium for Bass Strait air travel is no different to the price rip-off confronting Tasmanians at the petrol bowser.

We should be properly recognised and where appropriate compensated for residing on what is an island and sovereign state of the Commonwealth

These are just a few issues our idle MPs could get into.

With the rest of the nation battling the virus, they're all we've got.

Get to work.

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