Angus Taylor has been out spruiking the Coalition’s cut to fuel excise. But he seems to be assuming that the average driver fills up the tank once a week.

But in reality, two thirds of drivers fill up once a fortnight or less. In fact, we’ve crunched the numbers and the average driver will save only $9.80 per week or $510 per year. That’s less than Labor’s tax cut when it is fully implemented. A tax cut the Coalition has called a “cruel hoax”.

The cut in fuel excise will also encourage people to consume more fossil fuels.

If you walk to work, ride a bike, or catch public transport then you’ll miss out.

If you did the right thing and bought a hybrid or electric vehicle, you’ll get less.

If you work from home, then this is not going to help you.

This is poorly targeted cost of living relief that will also make it harder for us to meet our emissions reduction targets.

Dutton assumes that most people fill up a 55l tank once a week, whereas in reality both ABS surveys and those done by morning groups say that is the exception. A Budget Direct car insurance survey found that around two-thirds of people only fill up once every fortnight or less!

Getting rid of non-compete clauses (for workers earning under $175,000 – which good news – is almost all of us!) is a good thing and this is one of the reasons why

Sydney voters care about fish deaths and the impact of commercial fishing in Tasmania, according to a new poll.  

The federal government last night rammed changes to Australia’s environment law – aimed at protecting salmon farming operations in Tasmania – through the Senate. 

The legislation aims to scupper a long-awaited review of salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour, on Tassie’s west coast, by Environment Minister – and Member for Sydney – Tanya Plibersek. 

While the legislation was promised and driven by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, this poll suggests voters may punish Ms Plibersek, revealing her first-preference support has fallen to 41.1%, down from 50.82% at the 2022 election.

The Australia Institute commissioned the polling from uComms, which surveyed 860 Australians living in Sydney between 17 and 18 March 2025.  

Key Findings: 

·                     61% support stopping salmon farming in areas where it is putting the endangered Maugean skate at risk of extinction; more than twice as many who oppose (24%). 

·                     63% have heard about the mass fish deaths currently happening in the salmon industry in Tasmania. 

·                     68% think the current mass fish deaths are having a negative impact on Tasmania’s ‘clean and green’ brand, including 36% who think it’s having a significant negative impact. 

“Voters in Sydney and all around Australia understand and have watched in horror at what’s happening in Tasmania,” said Eloise Carr, Director of The Australia Institute Tasmania. 

 “That includes voters in the Environment Minister’s own seat. 

“This poll was conducted before the amendments to the environment laws were rushed through. 

“If voters were angry then, they’re even angrier now. 

“If this shambolic, chaotic process was designed to shore up votes in Tasmania, it could blow up in the government’s face on the mainland. “  

Given it is the last sitting day of the parliament, there is not a lot going on.

Which means that Andrew Leigh is moving through a lot of maintenance requests, and requests for works on public buildings.

It is that sort of day. So if you have a maintenance request, better get it in before end of business!

Speaking to the ABC a little earlier this morning, federal Health Minister Mark Butler argued the provisions in the environmental laws were “ridiculous”, while sidestepping a question about whether the changes impact Australia’s international reputation after Leonardo DiCaprio showed his support for the Maugean skate on Instagram.

“It doesn’t water down any of the other environmental protections that we have in place,” Minister Butler said.

Riiiiggghhhhtttt.

Here’s what the amendments do:

• Increase the likelihood that Australian native species will become extinct, driven by a government which promised no extinctions under its watch.
• Protect the destructive, foreign-owned commercial salmon industry in Tasmania.
• Potentially stop anyone – from local community groups to Federal Government Ministers – from reviewing projects like coal mines, gas exploration, land clearing or other destructive practices.

The Australia Institute Tasmania Director Eloise Carr summed it up when she said: “for once, just as our nature law was about to do what it is supposed to – protect world heritage and species threatened with extinction – the major parties have changed the law”.

Also, let’s not forget a decade ago Anthony Albanese described similar proposed changes to the EPBC has an act of environmental vandalism.

How things change. And not for the better.

Trump has signed an Executive Order that seeks to dismantle the Federal Department of Education – but can he actually do it?

On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Angus Blackman discuss Trump administration group chats, Big Pharma’s big whinge, and the history of conservative efforts to dismantle the federal Education department.

Over on Perth radio 6PR, Anthony Albanese was sharpening his attack against the fuel excise cut the Coalition has announced:

The problem here with Peter Dutton is not only that is his team made up of the leftovers from the Morrison Government, they’re now adopting leftovers of the Morrison policies. That’s what they put in place in 2022 in their budget before they called the election. And of course they legislated to make sure that that decrease disappeared and this one will disappear as well. There’ll be no ongoing cost of living relief. What we’ve done is provide ongoing cost of living relief. Not just tax cuts, but cheaper medicines, cheaper child care, Free TAFE that we’ve legislated, the schools funding program that we’ve been able to deliver. The tripling of the bulk bill billing incentive for Medicare will mean not just for a year or two years, but forever. We want to lift the bulk billing rates to 90 per cent for Medicare. Urgent Care Clinics will be there forever so that people can get the health care that they need. If it’s not a life threatening emergency, they have somewhere to go rather than the emergency department. This is what good policy looks like and that’s what we implemented in Tuesday night’s budget and that’s what my government will do, building on the foundations that we’ve laid in our first term.
 

His team have been on the ball as well – making sure he was aware of the fuel prices in the city to which he’s calling in:

Q: Cheaper petrol though, for one year or not, is pretty appealing. Have you filled up lately? It was about $2 a litre yesterday in Perth.
 
Albanese:

Yeah indeed, I’m fully aware. The latest figures that I have is that in Perth per litre was around about $1.75 – I know people do shop around. But the last fuel excise reduction ended when the Liberals legislated it to end. And what they’re committing here to do is to end it again. Introduce it for a short term to get through an election campaign and then get rid of it at the same time as they are actually promising to legislate higher taxes. The first time in the entire time I’ve been involved in politics, which has been around for a while, that any government or opposition have said, ‘Vote for us and we’ll give you higher taxes for every single Australian taxpayer’. Not just for some, every taxpayer will be paying higher taxes under them. And they don’t support our cost of living measures.

The Fin and others like to quote Australia’s gross debt which is expected to be $1,022 billion or 35.5% of GDP at the end of 2025-26. By contrast the government, the IMF and OECD tend to concentrate on net debt which is expected to be much lower at $620 billion or 21.5% of GDP. This is a big difference.

Why the difference? A lot of the gross debt is covered by liquid financial assets such as cash and deposits, advances paid and investments, loans and placements. These can be easily liquidated to repay debt if needs be. These account for the difference of $402 billion leaving the net debt at $620 billion.

It is also worth noting that the

·         net debt is expected to finance $185 billion in equity-like investments (lots of that in the Future Fund). Basically this amount of debt supports the FF and other equity investments, and

·         a big part of the debt includes “unfunded” employee and superannuation liabilities of $374 billion. The latter is a purely notional amount reflecting amounts the government pays each year from consolidated revenue. It is not an actual fund used to pay super entitlements. For more click here.

Anyway adjusting for those two, leaves just $61 billion or 2.1% of GDP.

Penny Wong is getting questioned by the Coalition’s Michaelia Cash and James McGrath on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu being welcome in Australia and is refusing to give a clear answer:

Cash: Minister, is Prime Minister Netanyahu welcome in Australia?”

Wong: “…That is a hypothetical and I won’t be responding to it”

The context here (not that the Coalition is thinking about this) is that Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a signatory to the ICC, Australia is under obligation to arrest Netanyahu if he steps into Australia’s jurisdiction. That’s not what the Coalition is seeking to discover here – this is part of the ‘criticising Israel is anti-Semitic’ campaign it has been running, but it is absolutely the context needed here.

Here is how Sydney radio 2GB is selling the tax cuts:

“The Prime Minister is saying that Aussies will have to wait for those tiny tax cuts. You’re saying that the fuel changes will be effective immediately if you win.”

OK, so let’s look at this question Peter Dutton received. It’s the definition of ‘friendly’ media.

‘Tiny tax cuts’ – this is from the same organisation that tried to say that stage three tax cut changes – which distributed the cuts across all tax brackets, not just the top 10% was a “broken promise”. Now those tax cuts are flowing and people are seeing it in their pay cuts, there is no mention of that, only ‘tiny’ tax cuts in relation to the new legislated cuts.

Also not mentioned – the Coalition’s fuel excise policy is only in place for a year. One year. That’s it. It’s $6bn for one year and will only make the difference the Coalition is claiming (about $750 a year for one average family is their figure) if the geopolitical space doesn’t go to shit. Because the moment there is any sort of invasion, threat to oil, supply chain problem, then fuel goes up and those savings go down. That is exactly what happened when the Morrison government did it.

And the fuel excise comes in the year before the tax cuts – so it doesn’t make sense to say that it is ‘in place of’ in terms of the budget position. There is no money foregone on the new legislated tax cuts until after the fuel excise is FINISHED.

It’s about the same cost to the budget year on year anyway, which is why they are saying it’s only for a year. Because the $17bn figure for the tax cuts is for THREE years – so just under $6bn a year. $6bn over three years is $18bn. The Coalition has already said that $17bn over three years is irresponsible so…here we are. A one off fossil fuel subsidy and a promise to increase taxes.

But of course that is not how it’s framed.