Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, March thirty one, twenty twenty six. Step away
Speaker 1: from the Jerry Can. The government says there's plenty of fuel,
Speaker 1: but it's going to make it much cheaper starting Wednesday
Speaker 1: by harving the fuel excise and cutting road user charges.
Speaker 1: Jim Chalmers says it's timely, temporary and responsible. But it
Speaker 1: puts a giant hole in the budget. So why aren't
Speaker 1: they rationing fuel, Why did it take so long to
Speaker 1: get here?
Speaker 2: And will it work?
Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers is here in just a moment.
Speaker 3: We're making fuel cheaper today because we understand that Australians
Speaker 3: are under serious pressure.
Speaker 4: Will reduce the cost of a sixty five liter tank
Speaker 4: five out nineteen dollars.
Speaker 3: Our government will reduce the heavy vehicle due to charge
Speaker 3: to zero for three months to help trucks continue their
Speaker 3: vital work for our nation.
Speaker 4: It is timely, it is temporary, and it is responsible.
Speaker 3: We are asking people to buy as much fuel as
Speaker 3: they need, as much fuel as they usually get, not more,
Speaker 3: not less.
Speaker 4: The cost of what we are announcing today is two
Speaker 4: point five five billion dollars another fifty three million dollars.
Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers is The Australian's political editor. Jeff On Monday,
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister announced it pretty sweeping changes to the
Speaker 1: way fuel is priced in Australia. First of all, are
Speaker 1: you going to rush out and fill it?
Speaker 4: You can't.
Speaker 5: Well, I think there's a fair few people that will
Speaker 5: probably wait until Wednesday when this very populous fuel exercise
Speaker 5: cut kicks in. There'll probably be a few jerry cans
Speaker 5: and some big traffic jams getting into the surveys. Look,
Speaker 5: the fuel excise decision is another bit of evidence that
Speaker 5: when this Albanezi government is under pressure, it goes to
Speaker 5: the checkbook, the taxpayer funded checkbook, and it spends its
Speaker 5: way out of a problem. We saw on Saturday the
Speaker 5: Prime Minister and Chris Bowen, who's been under a lot
Speaker 5: of pressure, say that they're going to underwrite more supply
Speaker 5: coming into the country. So what does that mean. We
Speaker 5: don't know how much it's going to cost, but with
Speaker 5: the oil price the way it is, there is supply
Speaker 5: out there, there are ships with oil on it and
Speaker 5: the government will probably hide behind commercial and confidence, but
Speaker 5: it will cost tens of millions of dollars to underwrite
Speaker 5: petrol coming in, so they hope that that will sort
Speaker 5: out the supply issue. We're already underwriting fuel refineries. There's
Speaker 5: only a couple left in this country. They wouldn't be
Speaker 5: open without taxpayer funded subsidies. And now we're having to
Speaker 5: subsidize the price of petrol. And we've seen some that
Speaker 5: will say that Angus Taylor on Friday has basically given.
Speaker 2: A green light for the government to move this way.
Speaker 5: Well, petrol stations are running dry. Fuel's becoming unaffordable for
Speaker 5: Australians and this government hasn't got off its task and
Speaker 5: done its job. The speed of the way that the
Speaker 5: government announced it on a Monday after our Friday announcement
Speaker 5: shows that this was already ready.
Speaker 2: This was already prepared, it was already costed.
Speaker 5: We're about six weeks out from the May twelve budget
Speaker 5: and it was like, thank you very much, thanks for
Speaker 5: giving us the green light to spend and this is
Speaker 5: going to cost about two point five to five billion dollars.
Speaker 5: And I think this is the issue with the major
Speaker 5: parties is that they chase that sort of populous big
Speaker 5: spendethon and no one's actually looking with more sort of
Speaker 5: complex thought about future proofing Australia. Why was our fuel
Speaker 5: stock so low? It's been low for years under the
Speaker 5: coalition under Labor. Does anyone think that Chris Bowen put
Speaker 5: fossil fuel petrol oil fuel reserves at the top of
Speaker 5: his list when they won the election in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: The answer to that is absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Over the weekend, the Prime Minister was taking a very
Speaker 1: sort of disappointed headmaster tone and it reminded me a
Speaker 1: little bit of COVID Jeff, where he was saying he
Speaker 1: was shocked to see photographs of people with multiple jerry
Speaker 1: cans filling up at petrol stations. But isn't that a
Speaker 1: problem that the government itself created by failing to do
Speaker 1: maybe something like this or something else much much earlier
Speaker 1: than now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Look, we do see this delayed response in times of crises.
Speaker 5: We've talked about it on a bunch of fronts, and
Speaker 5: they ultimately get there, but they have to get pushed
Speaker 5: by someone else saying why don't you do this, or
Speaker 5: they get some polling or some focus group research coming in,
Speaker 5: or their backbenches are saying you have to do more,
Speaker 5: and do it quicker that's really interesting, this sort of
Speaker 5: COVID link. And I've been getting some PTSD because I
Speaker 5: covered so many National Cabinet meetings Scott Morrison era, and
Speaker 5: it's funny to hear the government talking about they don't
Speaker 5: want to intervene, they don't want to mandate things, when
Speaker 5: I do recall them being in opposition and coming up
Speaker 5: with a lot of pretty draconian ideas.
Speaker 2: So it's a new world order.
Speaker 5: Now say, look, the Prime Minister has learned from that
Speaker 5: COVID experience that unless he absolutely has to, doesn't want
Speaker 5: to get in talk of rationing. There was that language
Speaker 5: from some labor ministers and Chris Bowen in regards to
Speaker 5: these people who are filling up their Jerry cans being
Speaker 5: un Australian, and that tone was pretty quickly, you know,
Speaker 5: it very much toned it back. We saw Chris Bowen
Speaker 5: and Jim Chalmers standing very grim faced and next to
Speaker 5: the Prime Minister. These are normally the attack dogs. And
Speaker 5: now everyone's looking towards the budget and to thinking there
Speaker 5: could be a recession by the end of the year.
Speaker 5: What's going to happen to the housing market, how high
Speaker 5: are costs going to be?
Speaker 2: And will this.
Speaker 5: Government now try and spend its way out of trying
Speaker 5: to lower inflation a lot they did with the power
Speaker 5: bills and try to avoid recession.
Speaker 2: And I think potentially.
Speaker 5: This Donald Trump Iran war has given them potentially an
Speaker 5: excuse to squib it and to go full spending popular
Speaker 5: sort of approach, the idea of.
Speaker 1: That being un Australian and filling up multiple jerry cans
Speaker 1: at the petrol station. And it's a clear reference, I
Speaker 1: think to the way people were hoarding so something like
Speaker 1: toilet paper or tintune or bottle water during the COVID pandemic.
Speaker 1: Is it on Australian or is it just kind of
Speaker 1: sensible if you don't actually have any faith in the
Speaker 1: government to make sure that the petrol station is not
Speaker 1: going to run out next week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really good point.
Speaker 5: We've basically ostracize the oil and gas industry in this country.
Speaker 5: We've got so much of it here and we're importing
Speaker 5: almost everything, And what other option do Australian motorists and
Speaker 5: those who rely on petrol have if that's their livelihood
Speaker 5: and they're struggling to pay the bills. So yeah, really
Speaker 5: it comes down to a supply issue. That's my issue
Speaker 5: with the excise. I mean, obviously people would want cheaper petrol,
Speaker 5: but at the end of the day, we just need
Speaker 5: to have that steady flow of supply. And it's quite
Speaker 5: ironic now to see crisp and through gritted teeth having
Speaker 5: to subsidize the importing of a fossil fuel in oil
Speaker 5: and bring that petrol in and make it cheaper.
Speaker 2: And I think the only thing.
Speaker 5: That Angus Taylor's announcement did to the Prime Minister and
Speaker 5: Chris Bowen was really, I guess, make them quite angry
Speaker 5: because he said to fund his fuel excise cut proposed cut,
Speaker 5: he would cut a whole bunch of these EV and
Speaker 5: green programs for labor.
Speaker 2: That's a no go zone.
Speaker 1: Well, we saw last week reports that used EV sales
Speaker 1: were actually up for the first time ever, so maybe
Speaker 1: Chris Bohm will get his way anyway.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that's it. I've heard the same thing.
Speaker 5: And you don't get the warranty right for the battery
Speaker 5: and there are issues with the battery.
Speaker 2: So this is what we see.
Speaker 5: You know, the more elite folk who could buy that
Speaker 5: new EV and get all that great subsidy, the trickle down.
Speaker 2: Element of that will mean that, yeah, you're going to.
Speaker 5: Have other families buying secondhand vehicles with zero warranty. So
Speaker 5: it's put a lot of pressure on Jim Charmer's six
Speaker 5: weeks out from the budget.
Speaker 1: Coming up, So why aren't we imposing limits at the
Speaker 1: petrol pump. Let's just look at that idea of rationing though, Jeff,
Speaker 1: maybe this is on Australian I don't know, but would
Speaker 1: a hundred leader ration have been such a bad idea
Speaker 1: three weeks ago if the government had said, look, there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with your supply, but to make sure that
Speaker 1: there's enough for everybody and that nobody feels the need
Speaker 1: to panic by, we're going to limit you to one
Speaker 1: hundred leaders per stop at the petrol station, maybe per
Speaker 1: week or per few days. Would that have been such
Speaker 1: a bad idea and could it potentially have avoided this
Speaker 1: massive hit to the budget that they're now going to
Speaker 1: have to deal with.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think there's a lot of trauma and paranoia amongst
Speaker 5: the political class thinking about COVID and mandates that came down,
Speaker 5: and I think that drove a lot of that resistance.
Speaker 5: I think Pauline Hanson had come out and talked about
Speaker 5: that as well. So you see the major parties, she
Speaker 5: does this to them where she'll come out with something
Speaker 5: very early, then they try and find their way through
Speaker 5: it and how they respond to it. I think it's
Speaker 5: difficult in the fact that you've got suburban motorists, You've
Speaker 5: got regional motorists out of suburban motorists.
Speaker 2: So how do you get that rationing level right?
Speaker 5: Cars generally are more efficient than they were many years ago,
Speaker 5: so I personally probably fill up once a week now,
Speaker 5: where in the old days I probably would have filed
Speaker 5: that more than that. So I think it came down
Speaker 5: to that. But it was pretty obvious to me that
Speaker 5: the government were very flat footed. I think as soon
Speaker 5: as the Iran War started, you surely thought about supply
Speaker 5: chain and for US our strategic reserve being in the
Speaker 5: US that was never going to come our way, so
Speaker 5: they should have had a plan in place, and unfortunately,
Speaker 5: I just as I said earlier, I don't think Chris
Speaker 5: Bowen when he came in in twenty twenty two, would
Speaker 5: have looked at our strategic reserves just how fragile they
Speaker 5: are in that thirty day mark and gone, we need
Speaker 5: to prioritize this to protect our sovereignty and to protect
Speaker 5: our families motor workers. It's sort of like he's learning
Speaker 5: it on the job. We've had shortages of ad Blue
Speaker 5: during COVID. It wasn't because they couldn't come out of China,
Speaker 5: but people were hoarding it. So you've got to get
Speaker 5: the actual suppliers sitting around the table.
Speaker 2: You've got to know who they are.
Speaker 5: There's also we had gas issues in terms of gas shortfalls,
Speaker 5: so you bring in all the gas bosses and you
Speaker 5: lay the law down. So I've heard that there are
Speaker 5: some independent fuel and other sort of private companies who
Speaker 5: are hoarding as well because it's not in their best
Speaker 5: financial interests. So it's going to be a pretty costly
Speaker 5: exercise over a few months because we weren't prepared for this.
Speaker 1: Well, Jim Thomas has clearly got a new mantra, and
Speaker 1: it's giving me flashbacks to budgets a couple of budgets ago.
Speaker 2: Jeff.
Speaker 1: It's temporary, it's timely, and it's repet so we've got
Speaker 1: six more weeks to hear that until budget night. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, this was supposed to be his big reforming budget.
Speaker 5: He was supposed to show us how he was going
Speaker 5: to lift productivity and everything's been blown out of the water.
Speaker 5: And the Prime minister's a pretty cautious fellow and his
Speaker 5: Treasurer has a lot of ambition.
Speaker 2: So who wins the day?
Speaker 5: And I think given the situation where it's been a
Speaker 5: while since we've seen these cost of living sweeteners, they
Speaker 5: didn't do it at my EFO. I think that there's
Speaker 5: going to be more to come on this. The problem
Speaker 5: is if inflation keeps going up, where does this stop?
Speaker 5: For How long can the government think they can keep
Speaker 5: propping up household budgets when the cost of everything keeps
Speaker 5: just going through the roof And the projections are is
Speaker 5: that we may well fall into recession and those cost
Speaker 5: of living pressures might just keep rising and rising.
Speaker 1: Well, Jeff, thank you very much and I'll see you
Speaker 1: at the petrol station on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: I see there.
Speaker 1: Thanks, hopefully we'll see you there too. Jeff Chambers is
Speaker 1: The Australian's political editor. You can read all his unrivaled
Speaker 1: analysis at the Australian dot com do AU