IMAGINE the increase in disposable income if Australians paid only for the fuel at their weekly petrol station stops.
But of course it’s a pipe dream as vehicle-owning Australians have become tax slaves of big government and their corporate partners in crime.
In Cranbourne West, Victoria, this week, the dream of tax-free fuel and freedom came true, but only for an hour. Prices fell to just under a dollar, their lowest since 2016, after members of the state’s Libertarian Party paid what would normally be grabbed by Canberra Corp.
Organising the stunt were Southeastern Metropolitan MP David Limbrick, Jordan Dittloff, the party’s senate candidate and the APCO petrol station on the Hall Road’s corner with the Western Port Freeway.
The promotion only lasted for an hour between 10am and 11am, and motorists were quick to line up outside the premises, jamming up the turning lane from the intersection.
Limbrick and Dittloff wanted to demonstrate the extent of the growing government grab for money of everyday Australians at the petrol pumps. They said the price slashing just a small example of the impact it could have on everyday people’s lives.
“Fuel excise is about 30 per cent, and we are also paying GST on top of that, so we’re getting slugged with that double tax,” said Dittloff. “Libertarians say that out of the $15 billion a year that gets taxed for fuel excise, only about $10 billion of that goes on roads, so you’re getting a lot of overflows and the government’s pocketing a lot of extra change.”
Prices minus the fuel excise and GST were 99.9 cents a litre for unleaded, 95.9c for e10, 111.9 for diesel and 69.4c for L.P. gas. “Whatever it is that saves us money, it’s great and I do hope this happens in the long term, but for now it’s good,” a motorist told the Dandenong Star Journal.
Officially, the fuel excise is a tax on fuel consumption and contributes to the Federal Government’s general revenue rather than being specifically allocated for road funding or other similar infrastructures.
The Australian Automobile Association says the current rate of the excise is at 50.6c a litre, and over the decade to 2022-2023, only 57% of this excise was reinvested in land transport projects.
Specifically in 2023-2024, Australian motorists paid $15.71 billion in fuel excise, and are expected to pay $67.6 billion over the four years until 2026-2027, as cited from the 2023 October Federal budget.
The Libertarians believe the $15 billion can be cut down by defunding the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), getting rid of the eSafety Commissioner, the Federal Department of Education and lots of other bureaucratic duplication and overlap.
The Libertarian program to prune the bloated, self-serving Govcorp is basically what President-elect Donald Trump is planning in the US, and the resistance is no less furious in Washington DC than it would be in Canberra.
“The government spends $10 billion without really breaking a stride, so we can absolutely find savings without making a difference to people’s lives,” Dittloff said. The Libertarians believe media can best be delivered by private media companies while education should be managed at a state level.
“Going back 20 years now and basically what this shows is that people are really struggling, cost-of-living is something a lot of politicians like to say, but nobody’s actually putting the money where their mouth is and doing anything about it,” Dittloff said.
“If the government were serious about actually helping people out on the cost-of-living, they’d be doing things like what we’re doing today – and they did during Covid, for six months the excise was gone.” He said Australia did not have a cost-of-living crisis, it has a cost-of-government crisis.
