Peter Dutton’s push of the opposition’s signature election promise — a one-year halving of the fuel excise from 50.8 cents a litre to 25.4 cents — has seen the Liberal leader visit more fuel stations than anyone thought possible.
As of Easter Monday, Dutton’s campaign had visited 12 petrol stations, the most recent being one in Carrum Downs, in the target seat of Dunkley on Melbourne’s bayside fringe.
The opposition says the cut would save a motorist with a 55-litre tank around $14 a week, with the ABC reporting the excise accounts for about 28% of the cost of fuel to consumers at the pump.
However, fuel prices have continued to tumble throughout the election campaign, adding to the opposition’s run of bad luck — a YouGov poll this week suggested that if repeated at the polls, the Liberal Party would be on track for its lowest primary vote in its history with just 33%.
Motorists are less likely to be concerned about the cost of fuel relative to other cost-of-living line items when fuel sits at historic lows — and that’s exactly where it sits at the moment. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the cost of crude oil has dipped 15% in a fortnight, to levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, and Tapis crude (the Malaysian crude oil used as a price benchmark in the Asia-Pacific region) is down $10 a barrel since the start of April.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission data shows that average regular unleaded petrol prices in Sydney over the past 45 days are down to just under 175 cents per litre from a peak in mid-March of around 202 cents, while similar trends have been seen in Brisbane and Perth to a lesser extent. Prices in Adelaide have returned to around 170 cents per litre following spikes to up to 190, while Melbourne has dropped from a high of 198 cents to under 175 cents. Some bowsers in inner-city Sydney are offering fuel for as cheap as 153 cents per litre.
The worldwide drop in oil prices has been linked to US President Donald Trump’s new tariff regimes, as exporters struggle and trade demand slows.
It’s a slap in the face to the few political commentators who spruiked Dutton’s plan as political genius amid the adversity of a lagging Coalition ground game. The Australian’s Dennis Shanahan said in early April that “Dutton is better off talking about petrol prices in Parramatta rather than tariffs in Timbuktu, and the more often he pumps his petrol tax break the better for him”. The Nightly’s Ben O’Shea mused that while Dutton’s “Tour de Petrol Station” might just work, there appear to be precious few pundits who think it will.
If polling numbers are to be believed, it seems voters have gone the same way.
Are petrol prices an election issue for you?
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