MOTORISTS face higher petrol costs within weeks after the Abbott government bypassed the Senate to reintroduce fuel excise indexation.
BUT the government’s backdoor use of tariff proposals to deliver the hike will need to be validated by parliament within a year or it will be forced to pay a massive refund to oil companies.
The excise will rise from 38.143 a litre to 38.6 a litre on November 10. That means a 40 cents a week increase for a typical household consuming about 50 litres of fuel per week.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the decision was “outrageous”, coming less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Tony Abbott told parliament he wanted a “mature discussion” about taxes.
“Today he ambushes Australian motorists, ambushes the parliament of Australia and through the back door has launched a sneak attack on the wallets and cost of living of every Australian,” Mr Shorten said in Canberra on Tuesday.
When Labor was in government, it used a similar method to push up the tax on alcopops in a bid to curb teenage binge drinking. Now the fuel duty will return to biannual consumer price index indexation from February 1, 2015.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said it was up to Labor, the Australian Greens and cross bench MPs to get behind the revenue measure. “The decision for Bill Shorten is whether he wants the government to refund taxes collected to fuel manufacturers and fuel importers or whether he wants that money invested in productivity and enhancing road infrastructure,” he told Sky News.
If the government can’t get the support it needs, it will have to refund an estimated $2.2 billion in excise funds. Senator Cormann said a delay in imposing fuel indexation on August 1 had cost $35 million in revenue. However, this is a small loss compared to the $19 billion that will be raised from the excise over the next decade.
The head of Australian Automobile Association, Andrew McKellar, is disappointed by the decision. “It is weak, it is sneaky and it is tricky. I have to say, it is also a gutless move,” he told ABC television. He pointed out the government hadn’t even put its original fuel excise budget measure to the Senate.
source: theaustralian.com.au
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