PM mute on fuel fix
The Prime Minister is resisting calls to do something about rapidly rising petrol prices.
Two Nationals MPs have called on the federal government to cut its fuel excise.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says any decision about petrol prices will not be announced until the federal budget is handed down on March 29.
“The budget is in a couple of weeks and that's when announcements are made about all matters relating to the budget and I don't intend to engage in pre-budget speculation on this matter or any other matter,” he told reporters.
NRMA boss Peter Khoury says the increasing fuel prices will inevitably be passed on to consumers through other goods, claiming truck fleets are now paying more than double the average price of fuel compared to April 2020.
“Diesel is the fuel that our economy runs on. Farming, agriculture and mining, transport, small businesses that run fleets,” he told the ABC.
“This is coast to coast and we have never seen anything like it in history. Your family will feel it at the bowser, in the supermarket aisles and everywhere else.”
But Deloitte Access Economics analyst Chris Richardson says cutting the excise is a move that the government would struggle to undo, and that the te extra billions going back into the economy would push interest rates and inflation up faster.
“This is not an easy fix because there is not an easy fix to be had," he told Sky News.
Australia has joined a group of 30 countries in releasing a combined 60 million oil barrels from reserves to stabilise prices after Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in prices.
Thirty million barrels of Australian oil will come from its US strategic reserve.