Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Today the Albanese Labor government is introducing the Treasury Laws Amendment (Fuel Excise Relief) Bill 2026.

This bill will deliver temporary and targeted support to Australian motorists and truckies in a responsible way.

The war in the Middle East is battering the global economy.

Supply chains have been disrupted, equity markets have been volatile, and inflation is creeping up across the globe.

Oil prices today are around twice what they were at the start of 2026 as a result of the conflict.

All of this is flowing through to prices at the bowser, and Australians have been left picking up the tab.

That is why we are taking steps to help shield them from some of the impacts of this war.

As the Prime Minister and I announced yesterday, this bill will temporarily halve the fuel excise for petrol and diesel and facilitate changes to the heavy vehicle road user charge to allow for it to be reduced to zero temporarily. And here I pay tribute to the transport minister for her work in this regard.

Halving the fuel excise will cut 26.3c a litre off the cost of petrol and diesel.

Including the reduction in the GST component, this will cut the cost of a 65-litre tank of fuel by nearly $19.

Reducing the heavy road user charge to zero will save truckies around $130 on a 400-litre tank of fuel.

This decision has been welcomed by the trucking industry, with the Australian Trucking Association saying, 'It is the lifeline that small trucking businesses need.'

This temporary support will come into effect from tomorrow, but it will take a week or two to flow through to retail prices, and it will end on June 30.

Australians understand that this is a short-term measure to deal with immediate and pressing challenges.

The scheduled six per cent increase in the road user charge will also be deferred by my colleague, and we have called on relevant states to reflect this delay in their registration fees.

By calibrating these measures in a temporary way, we will provide relief while also taking some pressure off the economy more broadly.

Treasury estimates these steps may reduce headline inflation by half a percentage point through the year to the June quarter.

And while it will incur a cost to the budget, the overwhelming majority of Australians, I think, will see this as money well spent.

This bill will also grant the minister for transport powers to vary the heavy vehicle road user charge for the next two years, where necessary.

This will ensure the minister has more flexibility to make temporary changes, allowing the heavy vehicle road user charge to be reduced to zero for three months from 1 April 2026 to help truckies and the transport industry.

Following discussions at National Cabinet yesterday, the states and territories have also indicated that they are willing to give back some of the extra GST revenue that will flow from higher fuel prices.

There are some complexities around how to put that undertaking into effect.

While discussions with the states and territories are ongoing, the bill also provides additional flexibility to make further adjustments to the rate of excise if needed to give effect to this undertaking from the states on GST. And I thank them for it.

The steps we are taking in this bill today are in addition to all of the actions we have already taken to date, including:

Our message to Australians is clear.

We hear you, we know you are under pressure and we are working to make your life a bit easier right now in the face of all of this global economic uncertainty.

The global situation is changing rapidly, but Australians can be assured their government's focus is on easing the cost-of-living pressures in the most responsible way that we can, securing our fuel supply, and getting it where it's needed most.

For all of these reasons, I commend this bill to the House.

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