Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald
THE Federal Government is rushing to be seen doing something as the weeks of high oil prices stretch into months and start to take their toll on its popularity. Having failed to contain public anger with the line that the oil price is not its department, the Government is now offering subsidies to help motorists convert their cars to liquid petroleum gas, or buy new LPG-powered cars. Service station owners will be helped to sell petrol blended with 10 per cent ethanol. Those are the big-ticket items in its energy package, which also covers oil exploration and some alternative energy initiatives. If the Government looks as if it was caught napping on the issue - and it does - the flurry of activity is intended to give the impression that it is now wide awake and very, very concerned. Though, like someone newly awoken from a long doze, it does not give the appearance of being entirely on top of things, we should at least be grateful that its initial, hurried response has done no harm.

...It is to the Government's credit that the excise [tax on gas] has been retained, and to the Opposition's that no serious pressure has been placed on it to do otherwise. Lowering the excise would be too expensive; it would skew even further Australia's costly and polluting transport bias towards roads; it would lull motorists, who already pay relatively little for petrol by world standards, into complacency about fuel costs. While the Government may have been tardy in responding to the oil price crisis, it has at least responded. Motorists who demand an end to the excise have not: they are acting as if no crisis exists, and they have the right to cheap petrol regardless of the worldwide shortage. Without clear price signals, they will never adjust their behaviour to the reality of expensive petrol.

... The petrol price squeeze has caught this country, like much of the world, unprepared. Right now, it hurts. To ease the pain, Australians must adapt fast.

(15 Aug 2006)

Australia: Petrol, polls and politicians