Family First

I won't lie. I don't like the Family First party. Its a very nicely wrapped far right religious crowd.

As mentioned before in previous posts, I believe that Australia has had an extremely good run for low cost fuel. Cutting the excise on petrol as FF's Fielding suggest here doesn't really stack up in the medium to long term.

I'm not yet sure why a comparison between Aus and Europe is unfair other than that Europe already pays far higher for it's fuel and it won't do FFs arguement much good to compare that way. Comparing Australia to the US isn't really apples-and-apples either. They have the lowest level of fuel excise in the developed world.

In many regards, petrol and diesel can be split down the line of voters and industry. Cutting petrol excise will be attractive to the voting public. However, inflation would be better kept in check by cutting the diesel excise. Diesel is far more prevalent as the fuel for driving industry than petrol is.

Howard is also aware that any cut in the fuel excise for short term voter pain relief is going to be bloody hard to put back when(if?) the crisis is over. Howard knows that giving that cutting the excise now, that'd be kissing that $3.8 billion away, politically, forever.