Under increasing pressure from out of control cost of living increases, the tyrant, Jacinda Ardern, acted last night to cut fuel taxes and road user charges by 25c a litre, resetting the price consumers now face for fuel by just a week.
Kiwi motorists will get some relief from soaring petrol prices, with the Government slashing fuel excise duties and road user charges by 25c a litre each from midnight.
But one major fuel company has jumped the gun, announcing it will impose the price reduction immediately.
Mobil said it would not wait until midnight, instead reducing prices across all petrol grades by the same amount straight away.
Mobil lead country manager Andrew McNaught said the company wanted to give “some immediate relief” to motorists as they drove home tonight.
“The cost of living has been having a significant impact on many households, and we want to do our part to help reduce those impacts, which is why we are dropping our prices immediately,” he said.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the current situation as a “global energy crisis” after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Cabinet had decided today to reduce fuel excise duties and road user charges by 25c a litre each, for the next three months. The change takes effect from 11.59pm tonight.
All public transport fares will also be halved from April 1 for three months.
“We are in a wicked perfect storm,” Ardern told reporters at her post-Cabinet press conference.
Nice slogan, but ignores the government’s own actions since taking office that we are now paying for. They essentially cancelled the oil and gas industry, cut the emergency reserves of fuel from three months to just one week and heaped on an Auckland Fuel Tax levy to fund rail systems they haven’t even remotely planned let alone started building.
Since the regime took power in 2017 fuel prices have skyrocketed by $1.02 a litre. Not taking just 25c for just three months seems, well, a ‘let them eat cake’ moment.
Remember too that the tyrant, Jacinda Ardern, in 2019 said that fuel prices were too high back then and that consumers were being “fleeced”.
The Government appears to have no plans to reduce the amount of tax Kiwis pay at the petrol pump, despite Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s repeated comments that New Zealanders are being “fleeced”.
She immediately copped flak for this from National leader Simon Bridges, who called her the “fleecer-in-chief”.
This morning, the Commerce Commission unveiled its draft report into competition in the fuel market.
The probe was ordered by the Government after Ardern took aim at petrol companies in October last year and said they were “fleecing” Kiwis.
And she did not skip a beat this morning when asked if this was still the case.
“Yes,” she told media on her way to Labour’s caucus meeting.
“You will remember our instinct was that New Zealanders were being fleeced at the pump – now the Commerce Commission has confirmed that that is true.”
NZ Herald
Again, a nice slogan but since that time the regime has done literally nothing to correct the so-called fleecing at the pumps. In fact, they’ve fleeced us even more. Around 3.2 billion litres of petrol are sold in New Zealand every year so the extra revenue for the Government from petrol sales is $1.77 billion a year!
The regime has chosen not to cancel the 11.5c a litre Auckland Fuel Levy, which would have eased commuters’ pain even further.
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff said he recognised the pressure rapidly rising fuel prices had put on the budget of many Aucklanders, but has no plans to reduce the 11.5c a litre regional fuel tax.
“Suspending the regional fuel tax in current circumstances would worsen the crisis Auckland Transport faces with the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in public transport fares because of Covid, while construction costs for new infrastructure and operating costs are rising rapidly.
“Any reduction in revenue in these circumstances would result in suspension of projects like the Eastern Busway and would not only delay their delivery, but also result in ultimately much higher costs,” he said.
Goff said the loss of revenue would mean less ability to borrow within debt to revenue constraints which means that investment in vital infrastructure would be cut by many times the reduction in revenue from the regional fuel tax.
NZ Herald
The Ardern regime is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes they’ve picked from the pockets of Aucklanders, for demonstrably zero return. A 25 cent three-month hiatus is pathetic.
The tyrant, Jacinda Ardern, also seems confused as to how Road User Charges are levied for diesel vehicles; they aren’t levied by the litre, rather they are levied by the kilometre and the weight of the vehicle. No media seem to have picked up on her particularly incongruous statement.
I am guessing that what they really mean is that the price of both petrol and diesel will be reduced by 25c per litre. But somebody mentioned road-user-charges to the tyrant, Jacinda Ardern, and she thought: ‘Wow, that sounds impressive, I must include that in my announcement, those plebs won’t know what RUC is and I will sound important.’
Once again they made an announcement but haven’t worked out how it will work. Everyone who pays RUC will be massively bulk buying in the three months the price will be reduced.
The tyrant thinks she is doing us all a favour but all the 25c a litre tax reduction has done is move the price clock back to last week. As for addressing the “fleecing” of motorists, no action there, just pithy do-nothing slogans.
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