The government has extended the fuel excise cut, but only halfway and only for a month, which changes the timing of the snapback without changing where it ends up.
⛽ The pump discount drops to 16c/L for July (down from 32c/L now)
⛽ The full discount ends 30 June, with the extension running one month
⛽ The heavy vehicle road user charge is set at 16c/L of diesel for July (half the standard rate, up from zero)
⛽ The July measures cost around $400 million in forgone revenue (the three-month cut cost around $2.9 billion)
⛽ Petrol reserves sit at 44 days, diesel at 39 days, and jet fuel at 32 days
⛽ Capital city petrol is averaging $1.65 to $1.92/L
This is a halfway measure. Instead of the full discount lapsing on 30 June, around half of it carries into July before the rest reverts on 1 August, with the scheduled CPI indexation landing on 4 August on top of that. The destination has not changed. By early August motorists are paying the full excise again, plus indexation. What has changed is the path, with the increase now arriving in two smaller steps rather than one.
I argued back in March that the excise cut was the wrong instrument, and extending it does not fix that. In a supply driven shortage the price is supposed to do the work of rationing demand. Holding the pump price down props demand up at exactly the moment supply is least able to meet it. That matters because the crisis is not over. The Strait of Hormuz reopened only briefly and Iran has already moved to close it again. Shut in production will take months to restart and shipper confidence has to rebuild before flows normalise, so I would not read this extension as a sign the worst has passed. There is also an inflation wrinkle, as staggering the snapback smears the mechanical price increase across two monthly CPI prints rather than one, which stretches out the period the RBA has to look through excise noise to read the underlying trend.
For business owners the practical takeaway barely shifts. By 1 August you are back to the full excise plus indexation, so the elevated fuel cost assumptions you should already be carrying through Q3 stay exactly where they are. The only adjustment is timing, with roughly half the pump increase landing on 1 July and the balance on 1 August. If you have already modelled the full reversion from 1 July, leave it. Being a month conservative on fuel is the safe direction to be wrong in. Transport operators should also note the road user charge is back to half rate from July.