BBC News 1 Feb. 2007: Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has reported record annual profits of $25.36bn (£12.94bn) for 2006. (30.81 billion Australian)

BBC news 2 Feb. 2006: The Anglo-Dutch energy giant generated profits of $22.94bn (£13.12bn) - up nearly a third on last year when it set a UK record with profits of $17.59bn.

BBC news 5 Feb. 2005: Shell, has announced record annual profits for a UK listed firm.
The group made $17.5bn (£9.32bn) after tax in 2004, partly due to the soaring price of oil.

Sydney Water paid an increased dividend to the NSW government of $193 Million (30 June 2006) But will need to "increase external loans to fund capital works."

A desalination plant will cost up to 2 billion dollars and have on-going cost of 36.3 million dollars per year.

It would produce 125 megalitres of water per day. According to Sydney Water, losses or “system leakage” is about 171.8 Million litres PER DAY.

The desalination plant does not even cover the losses of "leaky pipes".

Read the (13 page) 2006 Sydney Water audit report.

Are we a Single Issue Party?

Around July 2005, petrol prices rose to $1.05 per litre.
Only 5 months before petrol had been selling for 87 cents.

This 18 cent increase caused a lot of hurt, and the Howard Government seemed unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

And frankly, the opposition did not seem to care much either.

From there the idea of a new political party grew.

We wanted to know why the cost of fuel increased so much and why the Government could not or would not help people.

The answer from the Government was that the international crude oil price went up, therefore petrol went up.
However, Australia is fortunate enough to have oil, unlike many other countries who have to import all of their oil.
In fact in 2004 crude oil and condensate production was 31.6 billion litres. ^[1] (198.7 million barrels per annum)
That works out to be about 60% of consumption.

Therefore when the international price of crude goes up, only a small percentage should be passed on to us.
So why do we pay international prices?

The cost of production in Australia was fixed around $2.10 per barrel until 19 August 1975.
Therefore the quadrupling of world oil prices at the beginning of 1974 was not felt directly in Australia.

In 1975 then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser introduced the "Crude Oil Levy" to ensure that our local oil producers
would not be able to make super profits by selling Australia’s oil overseas at a much higher price than what they could obtain here.

The government kept the difference.
(This “parity pricing” means local production cost, plus crude oil levy (tax) equalled World Spot Price.)

Paul Keating changed the “Petroleum Resource Rents Tax” to include diesel oils & others omitted by Fraser.
The PRRT became a 'hidden' tax, which took Billions per annum. It was a tax, proportionate to world spot oil price, after a higher profit margin allowed to the oil producer.

We began researching and found that that there are in fact many taxes on fuel.

Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT)
Crude Oil Excise (or Royalties)
Excise
And of course: The GST (which by the way, is calculated on the final price, including all the above taxes)
Then there are the Company taxes:
- Company that finds the oil
- Company that transports it
- The refinery
- Some more transport
- Insurance companies
- and don't forget, the tax on the petrol stations, who by the way, on average receive 1 to 1.5 cents per litre. (The credit card companies usually get more).
We don't mind the oil companies paying tax, after all, they make record profits (see side panel).
However, the tax that the oil companies have to pay, is past-on to the motorist. (Of course we then pay GST on that tax as well).

And when oil price increases, so does the tax the government collects.
Is it a surprise that no government will do anything about the petrol price?

On the 25th of June 2005, the then Prime Minister Mr Howard, acknowledged the pain fuel prices would inflict
and conceded it could hit inflation in the longer term, but said his hands were tied. (Article SMH).

At a time when the Government had a $20 billion dollar surplus, reducing the excise or the GST or both would have been the right thing to do.
Instead the Government hung onto its money.

Actually - The Government does not have any money.
Whatever money they have is our money, from our taxes.

Ms Gillard- - Petrol Tax is our Money - - We Want it Back!

Do we need another party?

At the moment in Australia, we have effectively only 2 parties.
The government and "The Rest".

Normally, a government would put up a bill in the House of Reps, this would be debated and some amendments made, until the majority would support the bill and then the bill would go to the Senate.
More amendments could be suggested, the bill would go back to The House and eventually the bill would pass.

Under the previous Howard government we had a situation where the government had a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
As a result, there was no need for any amendments, or indeed any debate.
In fact "The Rest" was quite irrelevant.
So impotent was "The Rest" that the government had effectively limited the debate to the absolute minimum necessary for the appearance of being democratic.

The fact is; it did not make any difference what the other parties thought, wanted, did or said.
Unless someone from the government party "crossed the floor".
In other words: He or she voted with the opposition and minor parties, and in doing so would defeat that bill.
Unless that happened, the government had the numbers and 'The Rest' might as well go home until the next election,
because nothing they say or do would have any effect on the outcome of the vote.

There are advantages and disadvantages:

Advantage: Stable Government.

Disadvantage: you end up with a quasi dictatorship, where one person, or a small group of people, could dictate their will on the people.

So what can we hope to achieve?

If there are more parties it would be unlikely that a government would have a majority in both houses.
A small party can have the balance of power and negotiate with the government for their vote.
We, in the Cheaper Petrol Party, would negotiate a better deal for the motorists and the pensioners.

We talked to the people, We have grouped their concerns:

Interest Rates:

When inflation goes up, so do interest rates.
As Mr Rudd conceded and Mr Howard before him, increased petrol prices lead to an increase in inflation.

Therefore, does it not make sense to reduce the petrol price, by scrapping the GST and (part of) the excise?
When we get the petrol prices down, so will inflation and therefore interest rates can come down again.

Health Insurance Funds:

People wanted to take responsibility for their own health insurance.

However, even those on the highest possible table in a private healthcare fund found that they were hit,
with sometimes thousands of dollars, after having undergone an operation or procedure they thought would be covered by their fund.

In fact, some of them would have been fully covered by medicare, had they not been privately insured.
This just does not make any sense.

Public Transport:

People wouldn't mind taking public transport to save fuel, cost and the environment.
But public transport is just not available when and where we need it.

Trains and busses don't go at the times and to the places we want to go.
Sometimes it is possible to take public transport to work, but you just can't get back.

We want safe, reliable, affordable and clean public transport.
We need more, more often and on time.

Education:

We agree with the government that Australia should invest more money into education.

Education is not an expense, but an investment in the future.
We pay now for the students of today and they in turn are funding for their and our retirement tomorrow.

We feel that education ought to be free.
There is something immoral about putting a tax on knowledge.

Hospitals:

Politicians keep talking about increasing the number of beds.
The beds are there, just not enough nurses and doctors to staff them.

Most hospitals have some empty beds, sometimes completely empty wards, with all of the necessary equipment.

However, when patients including those arriving by ambulance are being turned away,
it is not because of a lack of beds, rather a lack of staff, and particularly a lack of nurses.
This has been a problem for decades.

We thought nurses were not paid enough and that's why there is a shortage of nurses. "Young people don't want to become nurses."

The opposite is true: In 2002, nearly 3,000 qualified applicants missed out on a nursing place at Australian universities.
In 2004, 3,760 students were turned away from university.
Not because they were not smart enough,
Not even because they could not afford their HECS fees ( $3,920 for first year),
but simply because the federal government put a cap on the number of places at universities.

Before 1993, nurses were trained at the hospitals.
The Government of the day moved away from a hospital based training to a university training.
This was completed in 1993.
In 1996, 12,451 students commenced their nursing studies at university.
However, by 2004, the number of commencements, along with the number of funded university places,
had dropped to 8,803 while the demand for nurses in our hospitals has increased dramatically.

A 2004 Australian Health Workforce Advisory Committee Report stated that the nation would need between 10,182 and 12,270 new graduate nurses to enter the workforce in 2006 and between 10,712 and 13,483 in 2010 to meet demand.

Only 5,720 nursing students graduated in 2004.
12,451 students commenced nursing degrees in 1996 - by 2004 the number of commencements, along with the number of funded university placements had dropped to 8,803.
A 2005 Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee report found that 2,761 or 20 per cent of eligible nursing applicants missed out on an undergraduate nursing place.
Almost half of the current nursing workforce will contemplate retirement in the next 10-15 years.

Media Release 12 January 2006 Australian Nursing Federation (Full text)

In the meantime various State Governments are recruiting nurses from the UK, Sweden, Thailand and other countries.
The New South Wales Government adopted a recruitment program similar to one operating in Queensland.
In 2006 a team from the NSW Government traveled to the UK to hire 400 nurses, with another 600 being sought from Canada and other parts of Europe.(Full text)

Around the same time an international campaign targeting doctors, nurses and allied health professionals from the UK, Germany, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand was launched. (Full text).

What is causing the problem?

State Governments are running and funding the hospitals.
The Federal Government is running and funding the universities.

It takes about 4 to 6 years to fully train a nurse.
Government terms are about 3 years.
If a government reduces the funding for nurses, the consequences wont be noticeable for a period of at least 4 years:
Which is after the next election.
But the "benefit" to the budget is immediate.

When the problem becomes intolerable the Government of the day has several options:

Blame the previous government for failed policies and incompetence.
Does not work if you were the previous Government
Blame the State Government.
Most voters don't understand the system.
Recruit fully medically trained people from overseas.
It's inexpensive, decisive and immediate. The Government can take the credit for "fixing the problem".
The problem with this one is that there is a world-wide shortage of medically trained people
Blame external forces.
When in doubt, blame someone else.

We at the Cheaper Petrol Party believe we should be training our own doctors nurses and allied health professionals.
The cost of their 4-5 or even 6 year training would well and truly be covered by the taxes they would be paying over their lifetime.
It's called "Thinking Ahead".

Childcare:

We feel childcare should be tax-deductible.
Under the Tax Act it is called "a necessary expense incurred in producing an income".

Drought / water:

Sydney's water supply is currently sourced from a network of dams in five major catchments occupying an area of 16,000 square kilometres:
Warragamba, Upper Nepean, Woronora, Shoalhaven and Blue Mountains catchments.

This land extends north of Lithgow and Blackheath in the upper Blue Mountains,
south to the source of the Shoalhaven River near Cooma,
from Woronora in the east
and west to the source of the Wollondilly River near Crookwell.

The catchment area supplies water to around 60% of the State's population.
The last two dams have been the completion of Warragamba Dam in 1960 and the Shoalhaven Scheme in 1977.

Since 1977 the population in NSW has increased from 5 million to 6.77 million in 2005.
No new dams have been build or planned. (ABS)
The last time Warragamba dam was full was in 1998 after a 6 year drought.
It filled and it overflowed. A pity that the dam was not a bit higher.

The population is doing their bit in water conservation.
We are saving water.
In fact, Sydney has reduced its water consumption from 506 litre per day per person in 1990-91 to 342 litre in 2005-05.
A reduction of 32.4 %.

What has the government done?
The government has "developed a demand management strategy" and has set "a target".
And it has produced a report:
Water Conservation & Recycling Implementation Report 2004-05.
And of course there is a plan: the Metropolitan Water Plan.

No new dam, to capture the rain when it does rain - No cloud seeding, to increase rainfall.
But it has commissioned a system, supplying recycled water to Liverpool Golf Course which is expected to save 60ML per year of drinking water.
(By the way, according to Sydney Water, losses or system leakage during the year was 171.8 ML per day.
That's right, no printing error, 171.8 Million litres PER DAY. About 11 % of total water supplied
That's about 62,727 Million Litres per year.) Photo Opportunity

The NSW Government did commit the State to a 1.89 Billion dollar desalination plant.
It is estimated to cost (the taxpayer) over 50 million dollars per year just to maintain.
When it was opened, 28th January 2010, the premier stated it would add an extra $2 per week to the "average" water bill.

This desalination plant has the capacity to produce up to 250 million litres of drinking water per day, about 15%.
That is just slightly more than what the system is loosing in leaky pipes.

Why did the government not fix the pipes instead?
There is a photo opportunity in opening a major project. Not in fixing pipes.

Global Warming:

A lot of the people we spoke to expressed a growing concern about global warming.

The Howard Government's reaction?
11 September 2006: Ian Mcfarlane's (Federal Industry and Resources Minister Howard Government)
comment on Al Gore's documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' and Al Gore's call on the Australian Government to do more to fight global warming:

"Well, Al Gore's here to sell tickets to a movie, and no one can begrudge him that.
It's just entertainment, and really that's all it is." And "It's one man's interpretation of fact,
and I guess whilst that can be classed as non-fiction, it can also be classed as not correct."

The Rudd Government?
Before the 2007 election, Mr Rudd mocked then PM Mr Howard as a climate change skeptic,
someone unwilling to even ratify the Kyoto Protocol; someone who didn't take the profound effects of global warming seriously.
After the election.
3/12/2007 - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed the instrument of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in his first act after being sworn in this morning.
28/10/2009 - Mr Rudd declared: "Perhaps the most wicked problem facing us as a nation and the world at the moment is climate change.
It is one of the greatest scientific, economic and moral challenges of our time."
28/4/2010 - The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, told the Herald
" The government would not try to legislate the ETS even by its new delayed start year of 2013
unless there is ''credible action'' by the end of 2012 from countries such as China, India and the US."

The Gillard Government?
Before the 2010 election, Ms Gillard stated on several occasions: "There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead"
Labor pledged to bring together 150 people to talk about the issue of climate change during a citizens assembly.
After the election:
7 Oct 2010 - Ms Gillard revealed Labor would ditch its citizens' assembly on climate change to be superseded by a multi-party committee with outside experts - and the ranking of a cabinet committee - to investigate ways to put a price on carbon pollution.
25 Feb 2011 - Ms Gillard announces Carbon Tax.
8 November 2011 - Senate passes the carbon tax.

Go to our "Global Warming" page, and see what we think.
Then let us know what you think.
Send us some feedback.