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https://thedriven.io/2025/03/28/election-watch-duttons-anti-ev-subsidy-is-a-policy-car-crash/>
"I guess it was predictable, but the Coalition’s first instinct in replying to
Labor’s recent budget announcements has been to lean hard on stronger
government intervention to help encourage the use of fossil fuels.
Peter Dutton has plagiarised Scott Morrison and promised to cut the fuel
excise, a tax levied on diesel and petrol. It’s collected from the producers or
importers of fossil fuels, and passed onto consumers – and Dutton’s cut would
only last twelve months. Business users of fossil fuelled vehicles receive a
‘fuel tax credit’ – three quarters of which go to the mining industry.
It is a bad policy in a wide range of ways. Perhaps the most immediately
egregious is how badly they’ve exaggerated the savings. Matt Grudnoff and Greg
Jericho from The Australia Institute show that the savings will be far less
than promised, here.
Another rapid response analysis published in
The Conversation shows that
“cutting petrol prices is not a well-targeted way of helping those people doing
it tough”. Angus Taylor claims savings of around $1,500 for two tanks a week
and $750 for one, over the one year period the fossil tax is kneecapped.
But the analysis shows that “under Dutton’s proposal, the average inner-city
household in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide will save around $270
over 12 months. The average outer suburban household in these cities will save
$450”. I’ve adapted their data into the chart below.
Dutton is specifically choosing to target households most reliant on fossil
fuelled transport, with this policy. People with greater access to transport or
bike lanes, or able to purchase or rent an electric vehicle, will see zero
benefit from these tax cuts. Even people driving smaller cars will see
significantly less benefit. This is the consumer equivalent of a fossil fuel
handout.
In fact, it seems incredibly likely that the indirect harm caused by huge,
fuel-guzzling vehicles would significantly worsen the inequality. Large
consumer utes and four-wheel drives cause harm through their climate pollution
and air pollution, and they tend to cause serious pedestrian and cyclist safety
risk.
Dutton’s effort to artificially preserve demand for combustion engine vehicles
will likely result in a net cost to Australian society, rather than a benefit.
The policy has also been met with skepticism from outlets that would normally
default to supporting the Coalition.
Despite Labor having packed a litany of loopholes into the ‘National Vehicle
Efficiency Scheme’ to allow for oversized vehicles, the Coalition is still
going to use the threat of efficiency standards to repeat the car culture war
they’ve run at previous elections, and it seems this targeted fuel-guzzler
handout will be part of that."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
