Households could receive additional cost-of-living relief in the federal budget because of high fuel prices, according to Infrastructure and Transport Minister Catherine King. Source: The Age.
Amid ongoing fuel shortages and following a fragile peace deal between the United States and Iran, Ms King played down the prospect of the May budget winding back tax breaks that encourage people to lease an electric vehicle, while playing down the short-term prospect of introducing road user charges for EV drivers.
The Albanese Government has halved the fuel excise by 26 cents and reduced to zero the heavy vehicle road user charge to provide relief to motorists because of spiralling petrol and diesel prices triggered by the US and Israel’s war on Iran.
In an interview on the ABC’s Insiders program yesterday, Ms King hinted that the three-month cut to fuel excise could be extended.
“I think everybody is experiencing across the world that because of constraint in supply, that means that fuel prices have gone up, and particularly obviously, the diesel price is holding much higher than anyone would like it to be,” she said.
“We’ve obviously got the tax cuts coming in on the first of July, but whether there’s need for additional measures for household and businesses … you know, they’re all things that we’re contemplating as part of the budget process.”
Last week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese travelled to Singapore and met with his counterpart, Lawrence Wong, to shore up supplies of petrol and diesel from Australia’s biggest source of fuel and next week, he will travel to Brunei and Malaysia with a similar mission to ensure imports of petrol, diesel and fertiliser continue to flow from those two countries.
Ms King defended a new $20 million advertising campaign titled “every little bit helps”, that will begin today across television, radio, online channels and more, designed to encourage Australians to conserve fuel.
“The advertising campaign is really designed to do three things – make people aware of the national fuel security plan, make people aware of the actions that the Government has taken to date, but also that every little bit that you can do can also help,” she said.
FULL STORY
Minister opens door to more money for households in budget (By James Massola, The Age)
