Coalition digs in on dual ‘tax cuts’ after action on fuel prices, tobacco



News.com.au
September 20, 2026

Angus Taylor says plans for a “fuel price shield” would see Australians get two tax cuts “for the price of one” after the Coalition also pledged to slash the tobacco excise following an explosion in the black market.

Mr Taylor announced overnight plans for a 27c per litre cut to the tax on fuel, or about half the excise, to be triggered when the two-week average for Brent crude – the international standard benchmark for fuel price – exceeds US$100 per barrel.

Currently, Brent crude is trading at a two-week average of US$103.87 per barrel, meaning the measure would come into effect immediately.

The Coalition expects the measure, once triggered, to save motorists about $15 on a typical tank on fuel.

The heavy vehicle road user charge will also be reduced from 32c per litre to zero under the plan.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor announced overnight plans for a 27c per litre cut to the tax on fuel.

Speaking from a petrol station in Canberra on Sunday, Mr Taylor said the program would be fully funded through cuts to the tobacco excise.

Last month, the Coalition pledged to slash the excise duty by 80 per cent – five per cent more than One Nation’s proposed 75 per cent cut – amid calls from state leaders over the punitive tax which experts say has helped drive a booming black market.

‘This is two for the price of one. We cut two excises, two taxes at once,” Mr Taylor said.

Mr Taylor denied claims by Treasurer Jim Chalmers that the program was not funded.


“Its fully funded … the cut to the tobacco excise will raise $8bn of funding,” he said.

“We’ve worked through that with the Parliamentary Budget Office.”

Mr Taylor proceeded to lash Mr Chalmers, calling him a “fraud”.

“He simply has never understood economics or the economy. He doesn’t understand how to do this sort of thing,” he said.

“We can bring down taxes, fully fund it through the budget, and ensure that we provide the relief Australians want at the bowser.”

Mr Taylor said the measure would be “anti-inflationary”.

Chalmers rules out Labor excise cut

In an earlier statement, Mr Taylor said fuel was “not a luxury” and with global prices once again spiralling, “Australians should know there is a clear automatic safeguard in place to provide temporary and targeted relief”.

“Australians need it to get to work, take the kids to school and keep their businesses running,” Mr Taylor said.

The average cost of Premium 95 and Premium 98 fuel has risen by almost 65c per litre since June 30.

“The Fuel Price Shield would provide certainty. When a serious oil shock hits, the tax comes down automatically. When oil prices return to more normal levels, the ordinary rate is restored.

“It takes the day-to-day politics out of the decision and gives families and businesses greater certainty about what will happen when the next global oil shock arrives.”

Nationals leader Matt Canavan said high fuel prices affected food, freight, and supply across the country, hitting regional communities particularly hard.

“In regional Australia you cannot just decide to stop driving,” he said.

“The Fuel Price Shield is designed to provide temporary relief when international oil markets experience an exceptional shock, while ensuring the ordinary arrangements return once that shock has passed.”

Under the Coalition’s proposal, the excise would return to normal after the eight-week average for Brent crude fell back below $US100 or three months after it was triggered.

At that point, the government could decide to extend the cut.

The Coalition estimates the shield would only have been triggered twice in the past five years had it already been in place, including at the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

The Albanese government halved the fuel excise in March in response to prices soaring off the back of the United States’ and Israel‘s surprise attack on Iran.

So the tobacco excise was, initially, to pay for smokers health problems. it raised more than was needed. So the excise went up and up, until such time as black market tobacco undercut legal tobacco significantly.

Now the excise is taking less. And then rather than address the problem of the excise, they target the smokers again, and try to shore up the excise. If the excise is dropping, the best way to overcome it is to reduce the excise and put the black marketeers out of business.

thegreatdivide wrote Yesterday at 1:58pm:



What is also so bad is that if criminals can import 1000s of tons of tobacco into Australia
then they could also import hard drugs or weapons.
Our borders are too open.


https://www.murdoch.edu.au/news/articles/as-tonnes-of-illegal-tobacco-sneak-in-p...

Thursday 12 March 2026

Around 575 tonnes of illegal tobacco products – cigarettes, loose leaf tobacco and vapes – were produced in Australia in 2024-25, according to official estimates.

But far more – an estimated 3,312 to 5,397 tonnes in the same year – was imported. It arrives mainly on ships coming in via China, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

About 2,244 tonnes of that was seized in 2024-25. So thousands of tonnes more have been getting in undetected.

The capital appreciation that “accrues to landowners, particularly in our major cities, simply via the effluxion of time as growth occurs around them, is really impossible to justify”.

Imagine a thought experiment where all other taxes, including income tax, were abolished except for that on land tax: not a cent levied on incomes, a supercharged version, if you like, of the federal land tax that operated from 1910 to 1952, where Canberra taxed unimproved land values at roughly 0.4 per cent.

I did the rough sums of what a hypothetical uniform land tax might generate today. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, residential land was worth about $8.32 trillion at June 2025, compared with a little over $3 trillion for the dwellings built on it, (roughly a 400 per cent and 300 per cent increase, respectively, since 2006).

Across all uses, Australian land was worth about $10.38 trillion. Much of what we call housing wealth is the value of a location, not the timber, bricks or labour put into a home.

Using those figures, I calculated what a uniform annual tax on all Australian land would raise if every dollar replaced an existing tax. A rate of just 0.33 per cent would, mechanically, match the roughly $34.4bn raised by state property transfer duties in 2024-25. A rate of 1.34 per cent would match company tax revenue of $138.8bn. At 3.26 per cent, it would match the $338.3bn raised by personal income tax.

A yearly bill of $32,600 on a block of land worth $1m would be formidable, even if income tax disappeared, and would be highly unlikely to happen politically. But I suspect many people reading this column, let alone the huge class of individuals who rent, would almost certainly be far ahead after reducing their income tax to zero.

Consider the modest end of the scale. Each 0.1 percentage point on the existing residential land base equates to about $8.3bn in annual revenue before those adjustments. That is real money for reducing stamp duty or income tax, which, to be clear, are far worse taxes. It should sharpen the question we ask of any reform: What would a household pay in land tax, and which other taxes would disappear?


Conservatives rightly defend property rights. But they should also ask why a worker’s next dollar of earnings deserves to be taxed at double-digit rates up to 47 per cent, while the rising value of a site its owner did nothing to create isn’t taxed at all practically.

The landlord “renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived”, Winston Churchill, hardly a communist, noted in a 1909 speech.

Slashing Australian government spending should be the first priority of any new government. But the tax system is also making us poorer – except the lawyers, consultants and accountants paid to avoid tax for the clients. The most unsuccessful great idea in history deserves to play a bigger role in any future major reform of the existing system.

Adam Creighton

thegreatdivide wrote Yesterday at 2:12pm:



Our borders are wide open for 1000s of tons of illicit goods.   

Albo must resign in disgrace.