Fuel

The everyday driver, stranded by a lack of functional alternatives, is being forced to pay over the odds for the right to put a vehicle on the road.

And there is no relief in sight, either as a tax cut or a greater return in the form of increased road funding.

The first whack is in ever-climbing vehicle registration fees from state government; the second is from an unrelenting fuel excise which the Federal Government would love to increase but can’t.

Continue reading "Excess excise excites bean counters, incites motorists" »

When the sun rose yesterday morning, optimistic Federal Labor MPs must have woken up thinking: “Monday morning – time for damage control”. Their more pessimistic comrades would probably have been thinking: “A new week, a new fiasco”.

The weekend announcement that some motor vehicle users will be exempt from a carbon tax on petrol proved to be yet another example of the Gillard’s Government shocking ineptitude and deviousness.

It rivals the desperate knee-jerk reactions that were the East Timor “solution” (now abandoned), the Malaysian “solution” (still not finalised), the ban on all live cattle exports (which is killing an industry vital to northern Australia), and indeed the carbon tax announcement itself.

Continue reading "Another week, another new Labor fiasco" »

With petrol prices on the rise again and a federal election fast approaching, the Federal Government is scrambling to get some runs on the board. After the Fuelwatch debacle and with the first ACCC Petrol Commissioner having resigned very quickly, the Government’s tough talk on petrol prices has remained just talk.

So why does the Federal Government continue to fumble the ball so badly on petrol prices? Well, quite simply because of their continued failure to tackle the underlining problems. These problems are far reaching and together they ensure that the oil companies and Coles and Woolworths maintain and extend their stranglehold of over the petrol industry.

In fact, the Federal Government’s repeated failure to tackle the dominance of the oil companies and Coles and Woolworths lies at heart of their failure to deliver on their election promise to put downward pressure on petrol prices. Like their promise to do the same for grocery prices, the petrol promise has delivered nothing for motorists.

Continue reading "Why Australian motorists are still under the pump" »