Essay by Eric Worrall
The Australian Albanese Government claims revenue is too tight to extend a temporary fuel tax cut which saved motorists $6 billion per year – but they still have cash to spend on a $20 billion renewable grid upgrade.
‘It will be difficult’: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese concedes cost of living crisis will worsen ahead of increase to fuel prices
Ahead of an expected rate hike and an increase to the price of fuel, Anthony Albanese has conceded the coming months will be difficult for many Australians.
Joseph Huitson Digital Reporter
September 5, 2022 – 10:45AMPrime Minister Anthony Albanese has admitted the end of the fuel excise cut will further add to the skyrocketing cost of living issues facing Australians.
The former Coalition government announced the temporary six-month halving of the fuel excise tax – which was 44.2 cents per litre – during the March Budget amid soaring petrol prices.
The measure, which ends on September 29, will see the excise again rise by 22 cents.
Ahead of a new parliament sitting week, Mr Albanese said the cut announced in the budget had bipartisan support as he noted it was a “difficult decision” to end it.
…
Read more: https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/it-will-be-difficult-prime-minister-anthony-albanese-concedes-cost-of-living-crisis-will-worsen-ahead-of-increase-to-fuel-prices/news-story/0aed81b0cacbe311cc33509b3d383521
The plan is to spend $20 billion over 8 years, or $2.5 billion per year on the green grid upgrade. The temporary fuel excise cut, which cost the government $6 billion per year (half the $12 billion raised annually), saved Australians $0.22 / litre fuel ($0.81 / gallon).
So by these numbers, if the government cancelled its green grid upgrade, the savings could fund a $2.5 billion per year permanent cut in fuel tax, which would save Australians $0.22 ÷ $6 billion x $2.5 billion = $0.09 / litre, or $0.33 / gallon.
$0.09 / litre or $0.33 / gallon might not seem much to some people, but that cost shows up in a lot of places – the cost of delivering food to supermarkets, the cost of transporting pretty much everything. If people fill their automobile once per week with 50L of fuel, that subsidy for big green is an extra $4.50 they have to pay for their gasoline.
That $4.50 per week is the cost of a home cooked budget family meal (lentils, a little chicken, a serving of frozen vegetables, a stock cube, and garlic), 2/3 the cost of a subsidised medical prescription, or over 3 months, a substantial portion of the cost of the skyrocketing energy bills low income families are struggling to pay.
Perhaps worst of all, the fuel tax is helping to push up mortgage interest rates. Fuel costs are a major source of inflation. The Australian Reserve Bank is raising mortgage interest rates to try to contain rising inflation, which is largely caused by skyrocketing energy costs. Those extra fuel tax dollars Albanese is planning to impose add to the upward pressure on inflation and mortgage interest rates. The strength of inflationary pressures, and the consequent height of the coming peak in mortgage interest rates, could make the difference to whether struggling young families manage to cling onto their new homes through the coming economic downturn.
We Australians are all paying more for pretty much everything, because of our green left government’s renewable energy fantasies. Sooner or later, when the utter failure of our government’s Net Zero plans become obvious to everyone, our politicians are going to have to answer for the higher costs and hardship they recklessly imposed on voters.
Well, the US has the Green New Deal lite, which is only slightly less ridiculous as the original. Greens are a preaching religion, and believe in suffering. Someone else, preferably, but someone is going to suffer.
Will the politicians have to answer?
The Australian voters’ response to COVID totalitarianism was to elect the green left.
Will their response to green left economic devastation be a correction to the right or a vote farther to the left?
I agree, it could go either way. There is still a strong streak of leftist militancy in some quarters, people still who mourn the downfall of Aussie PM Gough Whitlam, and what I believe were his plans for a union led Cuban revolution.
I still remember my dad coming home from a union meeting, explaining that his union organiser had told him his company and another hundred top companies would shortly be nationalised. He was worried – he was a solid Labor voter until the end of his days, but even he couldn’t stomach the idea of the snakes who ran the union suddenly calling all the shots.
The other thing the Left Historians casually forget to mention is that what the Governor General did was force an election and place the entire question of the right for Gough to continue to be Prime Minister back to the voting public.
And…
The voting public rejected him at the polls.
Whitlam wasn’t ‘removed’ by the Governor General, he was removed by the election. If anything the ‘Dismissal’ should be celebrated as the greatest example of Australian voters and Australian democratic processes.
Should be a public holiday replacing ‘Labour Day’ if you ask me.
Much of this is back due to the big “Talk Fest”..
Labor have not changed
I feel it was a bit more subtle than that, Tgasloli,
The media want us to believe it was voting a ‘Green’ government in because we clearly ‘want Green stuff’.
The subtly is that we basically voted out a Government many believed had failed us in many other issues, of which COVID management was one of them.
Remember the voter doesn’t need to ‘know’ that a government has done ‘X’, just perceive they have done it for long enough to change the vote.
The question we all should be asking here in Oz is not what are the ‘Green Left’ doing right, but what did the Morrison Government do wrong. They may not be directly linked.
Not that the Legacy Media would want to discuss this.
I have no faith in my fellow Australians. Largely urban dwellers and ignorant of the wider reality, they are cocooned from the travails of their bush cousins. There are 2 types: the leaners and the lifters and unfortunately the former outnumbers the latter.
Is it just me or is everything in the Misleadia “extreme right” but never “extreme left”?
Misleadia
Good one! I’m saving that one for the file.
In my experience, for those on the left the political spectrum goes like this
Communist – Socialist – Extreme Right
They actually believe that socialism is the moderate position.
No matter what the problem, to the left the answer will always be, more government.
Even for those problems that were caused by government.
Fyi
The fuel excise tax is taxed.
There is a 10%GST applied to the 44.2 cents fuel excise, so we pay 48.62 cents per litre.
Yep and your local servo will need to charge more than that to cover the increased holding cost of their stocks-
Excise on fuel and petroleum products | Australian Taxation Office (ato.gov.au)
Either that or go cap in hand to their bank for a bigger overdraft and guess where interest rates are going with the Reserve tipped for another rise today?
Not to mention the taxes on the earnings used to pay for the fuel.
But Eric what with the UK Government under Liz Truss contemplating urgently fracking gas and relaxing restrictions on new nuclear, Europe returning to coal and a possible Republican US House at least, it’s now up the the ‘little Aussie battler’ to save the world.
I hope so. I have a Liz Truss article scheduled to appear in 7 hours
Can we truss(t) her an inch before she proves she can be a sensible and strong prime minister? I am not going to hold my breath.
Not a snowball’s chance in Oz in Summer. {Or should that be in Hell – and can anyone now tell the difference?}
OT but…
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/west-virginia-coal-miners-help-tourists-push-dead-electric-car
A coal powered EV!
That’s hilarious 🙂
BUT we still don’t know if the driver was Democrat voter yet..
The car had a DC plate on it.
Ever noticed how socialist – lite governments are ever ready to invoke the “business case doesn’t stack up” excuse for projects that greenies have criticized, but studiously avoid presenting any credible financial benefits to the citizens for follies such as “net zero”?
It’s for the planet! Think of the children! Give us total control! (oh, wait, that’s the quiet part)
“our politicians are going to have to answer for the higher costs and hardship they recklessly imposed on voters”
That won’t be true if they can stay in power long enough- either by hook or
by crook- to be able to seize all power. Militarizing federal agencies, as is being done in the States with 87,000 new IRS agents armed to the teeth,
can be used to create a national domestic army to prevent others from
stopping their plan. Also, the IRS agents’ union contributes to the
Democrat Party, as I’m guessing all other federal workers’ unions do,
thereby giving the Dems even more $$$ to finance their dubious schemes. History is replete with numerous examples of what evil people are willing to do to get & maintain power.
They always fail in the end, regardless of how bad it seems at the time. Hopefully we don’t have too long to wait on this occasion.
Our opinions differ probably because of the differences in what’s
already happened in Oz vs the US. While Oz had Covid concentration
camps, we’ve had many more instances of both heavy-handed &
actual criminal activities, going back to Fast & Furious in 2009. The
MSM, who Constitutionally have special rights for the sole
purpose of exposing nefarious activities, helped cover these
deeds up & at times, actually aided & abetted these activities
whereby nobody ever has been held accountable. They’re
a well-oiled machine that is quite adept at not only
coming out on top but also exceptional at burying their opponents.
It’s for the above reasons that I’m quite willing to wait until long
after any reckoning has been done before I’d agree with you. They’re
like doggedly determined vermin who are very creative in finding
ways to get what they want. Also, cornered critters are very
dangerous & unpredictable as one never knows how they
will come out fighting. That’s why terriers are so hyper. They
will never cede their power peacefully which is why I prefer being like a terrier!
They always fail, but it often takes decades to centuries and costs 100’s of thousands of lives in the meantime.
The Coalition of the Swilling in Canberra at present.
Everyone is willing to do whatever it takes, logical or not, to save the planet until it hurts. It’s starting to hurt.
Be glad you don’t have to deal with the German foreign minister. https://warisboring.com/german-foreign-minister-vows-to-support-ukraine-war-effort-no-matter-what-my-german-voters-think/
‘Starting’???
More vile politicians, administrators and bureaucrats. Yuk!
Just wondering – How much will these billions of dollars spent on ‘climate action’ affect the climate?
Governments never seem to tell us. Oddly, MSM never seem to ask the question of them either.
/s
I remember Biden’s previous press secretary asking reporters “Who’s side are you on?”, when being asked moderately tough questions at a press conference.
I think the AU people thought that both sides promising the same only one took a bit longer to get there, so they just thought if we are going to have it anyway, we might as well get on with it, so we voted the other lot in.
Possibly. I think there was a strong element of people just wanting to get rid of ScoMo. He called West Australians cave dwellers, my conservative WA friends practically spat his name when anyone mentioned him, they certainly didn’t vote for him. He also managed to p*ss off loads of other people. If the Coalition had put up just about anyone else as PM they might have scraped in.
Its my bet that Albanese has already done a secret deal with the Greens to terminate the fuel tax reduction so the higher priced fuel with maybe ecourage people to buy useless EVs. Albanese is hoping that feeding the alligators will stop them eating him but its not working.
Should that not be crocodiles? Unless of course Albanese is forced to flee to Texas: nah, they’d never let him in there!
The Australian government can spend $125+Million on asking a stupid question to entrench a ‘voice’ into our constitution for one race, over all others – yet the actual parameters & application of that ‘voice’ will be determined using unchanged constitutional powers.
They have bigger plans than that installing another suntanned Marxist bureaucracy that can’t be dissolved like corrupt ATSIC and the Geoff Clark trio and will facilitate plenty of leftist political lawyering right up to the High Court. Welcome to Country suckers as it’s already infiltrated science and the scientific method with its theatre-
Welcome to what’s actually your country – and to an ancient ceremony invented the other day | Herald Sun
Which is why I suspect it will fail at the referendum and then we will all be called racist by the MSM rather than calling the government absolutely stupid.
Oh Eric, Eric, Eric, mate you have been in OZ long enough to know full well that statements like
“our politicians are going to have to answer for the higher costs and hardship they recklessly imposed on voters”
are but theoretical hyperbole.
Dare I say it but its almost “Griff like’..
Ok I apologise but please don’t do that again..
The Labor, Libs, Greens and Teals are all the same, blame the other bunch.
None are grown up enough to even discuss nuclear energy yet, so down we go on the big green road to energy oblivion..
Same everywhere else in the West.
To the young I would say, ‘Go East, Young Man’. {Where man, of course, should be read as person.}
“You Australians are all paying more for pretty much everything, because…you elect a green government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_the_Divine_Heart