The indications are that the sun might rise in the east, bikini models dating sports stars might attract tabloid attention and airport car-parking charges might reflect an element of monopoly rent.
What's ridiculous about the above statements of the bleeding obvious is that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission actually put out a media release last week quoting its chairman as saying one of them. Amazingly, it wasn't the one alluding to some kid with an ostentatious ring, car and broken engagement.
In its spray about the performance of our major airports in general and the dud performance of Sydney airport in particular, the ACCC release actually said: “The indications are that car parking prices likely reflect an element of monopoly rent."
Shame they missed the chance to go on the record with something about the Pope's religion and where bears defecate.
Of course Sydney Airport exploits its monopoly rent to the hilt, gouging customers and airlines at almost every opportunity. The one mystery is why customers aren't (yet) required to pay to use the public bathrooms.
In the case of parking, Macquarie Airports' Sydney operation extends its rent-seeking grasp beyond its own perimeter to protect the on-site rip-off - $50 for four hours - effectively regulating the price of the competition even when it's a couple of kilometres away.
If you thought the likes of Park N Fly might keep Macquarie Airports vaguely honest, thing again. Not only does the off-airport competition have to deal with the distance from the terminals and the hassle of running a fleet of vans shuttling passengers, the airport monopoly charges them for the privilege. In the Sydney Park N Fly case, each time a van enters the airport to collect a passenger, Sydney Airport collects $4.
It's an amount that has been and no doubt will be raised from time to time and is pretty much at the whim of the monopoly.
So why the ACCC tip-toes around with mimsy “might” and “likely” words instead of just declaring the monopoly and taking the stick to it is beyond me and, I suspect, every other compelled airport user.
And that's what it is reasonable to expect when a monopoly is privatised. Private owners pay their money for the right to extract monopoly rent – and they will do so.
Which is why the Queensland coal mines are right to be concerned about the way Anna Bligh is going about locking in a privatised rail monopoly.
There's rich history on the way the rail monopoly can extract rent from the mines. The Bjelke-Petersen government used it brilliantly, inviting in miners with low royalty deals, but slogging them later with a de facto tax on the vital rail infrastructure.
There is every reason to believe that proposed listed company will seek to gouge with the worst of them. It will be the directors' responsibility to do so. Heavens, maybe they can pick up some redundant Macquarie infrastructure types to show them how.
Combing the rails and the wagons in the one deal might make the IPO attractive as the government tries to sell a sort-of socialised privatisation against the brute power of Queensland unions, but it's setting a very important industry up for a gouging.
With the Henry tax review tipped to recommend a more rational resources rent tax system, the timing is not good to be creating an effective private tax on Queensland mines.
Somewhere the ghost of Bjelke-Petersen might be chuckling at the nerve of the thing – at least he would have made sure his family, friends and party would have copped a nice lick of the float.
And down the track, literally, Graeme Samuel might have the opportunity to observe that the Queensland rail charges might have indications of likely monopoly rent.
Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor.
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