No and it never was!
Simply put, it is just another one of those regressive measures, that was created to enable the transfer of tax liability, from the tax avoiding wealthy few, to the massively numerical poor/less well off!
Even so, it won't raise much money if we don't bite the bullet and do something besides ringing our hands and saying isn't it awful, about a week's reserve of fuel!
From a personal perspective, this just highlights everything that is wrong in politics and as always, opportunistic politicians, every-ready, it would seem, to serve a narrow sectional interest; and indeed, it would seem, favor them ahead of the national interest!
Which would be served by reinstating the govt oil and gas corporation, which in turn should be tasked with finding and exploiting our own fuel resources, and wherever they lay.
(No more sacred cows please!)
But particularly if they can be shown to produce far less carbon from wellhead to harvester/what-have-you, than that we import!
After that we just need to crack on with real and quite massive tax reform!
In which case we'd never have to confront this issue ever again, just take the blinkers off and get on prospering the nation! Not billionaire oil barons!?
Like, you think multinational oil companies need a further lift in their already price gouged profits!?
Rhrosty.

Come on Rhrosty old mate, time to stop bleating about the poor/underprivileged, every time some cost is mentioned.

We all know that on average those on less than the average wage pay no income tax. They get it all, plus more, back in handouts.

It is to cover those extras that are handed out to the non wealthy that such taxes are necessary.

You can't have free health, free education, & subsidised damn near everything, without charging a bit back to the recipients.

Just because Melbourne is the second biggest Greek city in the world, is no reason to try to emulate their crazy economics.

Too right hasbeen, the under privileged just don't know how lucky they are to be living in a generous nation like we have.

Yes Hasbeen old mate, and this endless money churn costs billions!
Better we just remove all the non means tested benefits, and focus on reducing costs, to where all can afford to live and above the poverty line.
The poor still pay the GST and fuel excise. And the extra this always imposes at the checkout.
Better we reduce all imputations and allow true competition to do what some economists tell us it does.
Namely reduce costs, and not just for the so-called poor, but hard-pressed small business as well!
Imagine, the removal of all the profit demanding parasitic nonproductive middlemen, would not only halve the cost of living, but that of doing business in this country as well!
The poor may cost the taxpayer millions; but the real blood suckers, tax avoiding and parasitic profit demanding middlemen, cost the taxpayer many annual billions!
One would have thought a man able to earn honors in science, would have been a bit brighter and seen that?
Is that why they call you, hasbeen; as in, hasbeen brighter?
Rhrosty.

The current price of petrol in Australia is ridiculously low, and should be nearer to the British/European level of around $2.20 per litre. This would require additional tax of around $1 per litre, with no compensation for anyone. Hockey missed his chance when he said that a petrol price increase wouldn't affect the poor; he should have explained that his statement was correct because when he finishes with them none of the poor will be able to afford to own a car.

The motto for the next decade should be: "Is your journey really necessary"

What seems so hard for many to realise is the the current standard of living is unsustainable, and needs to be LOWERED. Only by doing this can we avoid the fate of Greece, Spain, etc.

What we really need to do is to move to a fuel that contains 85% alcohol, which is produced from local sources. This would mean that 75% of our fuel would be sourced locally, and remove our current over-dependence on foreign oil.

I continue to be amazed at the inability of most posters to appreciate how terrible things in the world will be over the next 20 years. The total failure to reverse the enormous expansion in world population means that we can expect constant attacks from groups like ISIS. What people should be thinking about is what we would do if ISIS got hold of nuclear weapons. This is not idle thinking, as Pakistan has quire a few. The detonation of a terrorist nuclear device on New York of London would result in vengeance which would be terrible, but this is the world we live in.

Rehctub, just who are these underprivileged, & how much do you think they should be paid out of workers earnings? Are you talking about pensioners, dole recipients, or the bloke driving the garbage truck?

Rhrosty, who are all these wealthy rip off middlemen you are on about. I know a lot of smarties made heaps from Ruddies schools spending, subletting contracts that were awarded to excessive prices, but otherwise I have not run into many. Perhaps I just don't mix in your rarified areas.

Are you talking about wholesalers, often called middle men? I knew a few of them, & used to supply them. It doesn't matter who does it, a middle man or the manufacturer, someone has to warehouse & distribute stuff. I always found it cost more to do it yourself as a manufacturer, than have a wholesaler do it. He was better at it usually, but I don't know any who got rich doing it.

We hear about sustainability, but keeping 1.5 million on welfare, plus the pensioners, & dare I say the bureaucrats, is just not sustainable. Every advanced country is going down the tube to bankruptcy. We are going to have to find a way to make most of us, even us old farts, self supporting.

The coming huge cost of public service pensions is going to be that final straw. Add the disability insurance scheme, & the system WILL fail.

We have to find a source of money to pay for it all. Sure the churn is not the answer, but saying we should be more generous is simply head in sand stuff, ignoring the too hard problem, by kicking the can down the road.

As for cutting costs, how the hell can any one do that, when awards are so high. At the same time, most pay packets are not a living wage for a family. Rater than cheap & nasty shots, give me your answer, I'm all ears.

Indexation of fuel tax is stupid because it is a driving factor pushing up cost of just about everything, causing more inflation, adding to cost and inability or choice of consumers to consume.

Australia is a big country. There is much greater distance between essential destinations travelled to buy supplies.

Fuel excise is not the fundamental problem.
The fundamental problem is the shortage of cash.
Shortage of cash suit the finance industry because it forces more and more people to borrow money and pay interest.

It is the pockets and purses of people that need stimulus.
Banks in Australia are raking in billions.
Inflation suits the banks that thrive as they deal in bigger and bigger numbers.

Indexation of bank profit would be a better way to fund government than adding the burden of fuel tax onto everyday and would be if they could be consumers.

I think the best solution is to develop new productivity focussed on export.
Significantly expansion of the Australian dairy industry could result in more and more milk protein export on a scale similar to that now creating a virtual boom for the New Zealand economy. Australia is supposed to be a food producing nation.
Aquaculture could be harnessed in wild fish production, marine-culture instead of having production and feed cost using cages and tanks.
Quality timber and QUALITY steel production could generate and save significant export revenue.

Indexation of fuel is not good policy because there are better alternatives for government to generate essential revenue.

Instead of selling the farm and draining cash away from consumers to 'balance the budget'.

Yes JF Aus I agree we have allowed the banks to run wild, & they should be tamed. When I was a boy they paid 3.25% on savings account deposits, & housing loan interest was capped at 4.5% I think it was. Only loan sharks charged 8% on loans.

I don't know how much you know about the dairying, but around here it is just a slow way to go bankrupt. We have just one of 12 left, A 4Th generation farm. When the 88 year old father can no longer help, it will close, as even with 300 cows, it is not viable if any labour is required.

I gave up trying to do anything useful on the land years ago. I was trying to breed better cattle, but found plants for the nursery trade was the only thing that paid the bills.

I have watched them all go. Hell even a very hard working Vietnamese family gave up market gardening. The land stops being worked when the father retires. Kids won't work so hard for so little, as their fathers did.

Some people are still running cattle, but really only because they don't know how to stop. Most of them love it too much to stop anyway.

One neighbor, who still farms makes most of his income doing repairs for hobby farmers on their 10 acre blocks, was telling me his net last year was just $13,000. His kids wanted him to give up, but he wasn't quite ready yet.

Hasbeen, a good example is a clothing manufacturer, that took on Asia and won.
Computer assisted cutting was just the start, and direct sales to customers who found it difficult to buy of the shelf, another.
Their vital details were filed and routinely undated, and when they asked for this or that from the catalog, it was delivered in days, and made to measure/perfect fit/fair price.
Today we are still in some cases rolling out an NBN, which should assist more of these direct sales/entrepreneurial approaches!
And a simple unavoidable stand alone expenditure tax, would quite dramatically lower the average tax burden and relieve it of the unproductive parasite class, who seem to think the world and complexity owes them a living!?
We have profit demanding importers, who make Asian sourced textiles and footwear, nearly as expensive as that we used to make here.
And others live off of widows and mums working all hours, at piece work, in their garages, for the garment trade!
And which farmer do you know is waxing fat supplying wholesalers or grocery chains?
Not so at any farmer's market dealing direct with the public, where both are better off!
Typically you refuse to see the big picture, but like a nit picking housewife, want detailed minutia!
And just for the sake of argument and winning, which is all that seems to matter to you!?
I would have thought a man in your position would have loved a substantial reduction in tax related costs, and all for farmers markets, on the grounds they make farmers just like you claim to be, price fixers, as opposed to price takers!
And trade painters just love buying direct from a Melbourne manufacturer, and for half what they used to pay the shop owner!
A very wise man once said, "at some point complexity always becomes fraud"!
Rhrosty.

Hasbeen, my definition of an underprivileged whinger is one who openly accepts the gifts provided by others (welfare) then whinges because it's not enough. Then, as if that's not enough egg on face for the contributor, they then have the hide to shot them down for what they have achieved. People have to understand that fir every dollar they draw from the system, someone else has earned a high income to pay that net dollar in tax.

As fir our situation I share your concerns that we are headed fir a train wreck, and it's my opinion that the only thing that will save us is a better, more efficient and fairer tax system. I just hope it's not another case of too little too late if and when they do act.

As for the banks they are legalized criminals in that the only reason they exist is because of other people's money, as they borrow this for pittance, then lend it to make billions. Talk about super profits, but notmone mention about a super profits tax from that sector.

I'm sure buying direct from a factory is great for painters who live & work close to that factory, but not much use for one 100 kilometers away.

I have mentioned some of the economics of this before. I had to switch to importing an Item I used to make for $7.00, when competitors started importing copies from Taiwan.

I could land the item into store for $2.00 made to my specification. So the machinery gathered cobwebs. I hated it as much as you probably do, but the brass to make the thing cost $4.00 here in Oz, before manufacturing & chrome plating costs.

That was not the worst of it however. It cost me $13,00 average to send the damn things to our wholesaler in WA. It cost $18,00 each to send just a few to a builder or retailer in WA.

Perhaps it is the truckies, or the truck companies you should hate.

Even more, you should hate the unions that destroyed our coastal shipping industry, with ridiculous pay & conditions for ships crew, & wharf laborers.

In the early 70s a mate, a sparky on coastal shipping, told me he had just seen his job die, in the arbitration commission. The judgment meant no new ships would enter the trade, as it could no longer be viable. How right he was.

Hasbeen,
The milk quota buy-up comes to mind.
Compare the milk industry in Australia to the following, we could be living of a different planet.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/fonterra-ramps-up-china-dairy-hubs/story-fn91v9q3-1226985276574

There is even history of the boom in milk industry development in Pakistan and Bangladesh but not Australia.
http://www.tetrapak.com/about-tetra-pak/food-for-development/dairy-development

Australian farmers lack government assistance.
In fact government and media is hindering Australian farmers in general by keeping them dumbed down about collapse of whole world ocean protein sustainability and need and opportunity to produce affordable alternative supply, such as from milk.

It seems it's easier to increase tax than to understand and develop relevant opportunities.

Fuel excise rising will only force prices to increase across the board.

579,

So the worm has turned. After spending so much time claiming that the carbon tax would not force up prices, now the indexing the fuel tax which costs a tiny fraction of the carbon tax will?

What a hypocrite!

Yes SM, they are hilarious aren't they.

They'll say anything that might suit their bitch of the moment, & are too dumb to remember what they were claiming yesterday.

All Abbott has done is cover the costs of the carbon tax without any benefit from removing the carbon tax. Fuel excise will greatly overtake overtake what the carbon price cost.
The cost of power rose on the back of the demolition of the carbon price.

Rhrosty I'm not really disagreeing with you, just pointing out why the old ways don't work.

A mate was transferred to Brisbane from Gladstone a while back. They closed the milk factory. Reducing supply, & increasing costs now mean it is cheaper to freight that milk to Brisbane for processing, then back for sale. That is ridiculous but true evidently.

30 years ago there were 12 dairies around the small town of Howard. When labouring on the council 38 hours a week paid more than the dairy earned gross, working 75 hours a week, the kids refused to stay on the farms, & they all closed down, to be sold as hobby farms.

120 citrus orchards closed for the same reason. One proud old orchardists was told to rip out those stupid trees. He wanted to sell to retire, when his sons would not take the place as a gift. The agents said it was worth more bare, than with 40 acres of productive oranges & mandarins.

His grand father was famous for developing that top quality strain of mandarin. Who cares, they come from California today.

I was looking at some photos of Maryborough Qld recently. One was of the old flower mill, established it proudly boasted, in 1880. closed these 35 years.

Wouldn't it be great if Bass is right, & we have to go back to living & producing with in horse & dray distance of everything. Hope we still have enough power to drive a little crane, to get me onto a horse, or into a sulky. My knees won't do it any more.

Don't worry, government is going to run the country with the fuel tax, oh sorry "excise", and probably an increase in GST as well.

I see APEC the economic forum is dealing with flight M17.

And the G20 is going to grow productivity.
What sort of fertilizer might they use for that?