Last week, Anthony Dorney was selling cattle to keep his 25 timber trucks moving on the NSW Mid North Coast, and today, the National Cabinet gave him nearly 58 cents in the dollar back. That is according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who confirmed the fuel excise will be halved for all vehicles from Wednesday, April 1, cutting petrol and diesel by 26 cents per litre, whilst the heavy vehicle road user charge will be reduced to zero.
Wood Central understands that the road user charge reduction adds an additional 32.4 cents per litre to the excise cut for heavy vehicle operators, at a combined cost to the federal budget of $2.5 billion. Treasurer Jim Chalmers described the package as “timely, temporary and responsible” whilst declining to outline how that cost would be offset.
It comes as harvest and haulage operators nationwide have been burning through fuel bills that have more than doubled in recent weeks, with Wood Central last week revealing that surging costs were running some operators as much as $70,000 a week in the red.
Denis Greensill, one of NSW’s big three timber haulage contractors, has already stopped using bulk tanks after major distributors cut supply to independents — pushing his 35-truck fleet onto retail bowsers competing with passenger vehicles for whatever remained.
At 43 to 45 cents per kilometre in fuel costs and 50,000 litres consumed weekly, Greensill calculated he was losing $4 a tonne. From Wednesday, the combined excise and road user charge relief returns more than $29,000 a week.
Andrew Hurford, President of Timber NSW and CEO of Hurford Hardwood, had called for the full 50-cent excise to be suspended as a temporary relief measure, warning a direct line ran from diesel at the pump to inflation at the checkout and interest rates set by the Reserve Bank. Wednesday’s package delivers more than half that in excise relief alone, with the zeroed road user charge adding the remainder of what Hurford had called for.
“We understand in particular that the heavy vehicle industry is under real pressure,” Prime Minister Albanese said. “For many trucking companies, they rely upon a cash flow that is under pressure because they pay for their fuel.”
The National Cabinet also adopted a formal national fuel security plan today, formalising intervention thresholds as supply conditions deteriorate and comes after documentation obtained by Wood Central showed Australia could not guarantee fuel supply past mid-April.
Please note: This story is part of a special Wood Central series covering the fuel crisis in regional and rural communities and its impact on Australia’s $23 billion forest products value chain. For more information, click here for Wood Central’s exclusive story with Todd Gelletly, Managing Director of Gelletly Red Gum Firewood, one of the eastern seaboard’s largest wholesale firewood suppliers.
