It’s everyone elses problem
Fuel Watch currently operating in WA is obviously working as West Australians watch their fuel price go up to the second highest of all the capital cities. Not that will worry Rudd as he will still try and bring it in nationally. Last week Rudd told OPEC to release more fuel to fix the problem while financial commentators think it has something to do with trading and this week he is telling our poorer Asian neighbours that they should lower their subsidies so us rich Aussies can have cheaper fuel.
What is he on?
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Bottom line is, Rudd’s policy on fuel prices is the same as Howard’s with the exception of “Fuelwatch”, which is probably going to have a marginal effect on prices either way. Personally, I don’t have much sympathy for people whingeing about the rapid rises. We still have some of the cheapest fuel in the developed world. In any case I’m paying 65.9cpl for my fuel (LPG) and getting 13.2lit/100km from my SVI equipped Falcon, and my runabout does 8.5l/100km on 95 octane unleaded. I’d convert it as well, but would need a trailer for the gas tank.
LPG is cleaner than petrol, safer (tanks are built to a higher standard than the plastic contraptions increasingly being used by manufacturers to store petrol), and Australia has a surfeit of it. The system has proved entirely reliable, and the toroidal tank (68lit) impiges only slightly on luggage space. Because the LPG is injected, there is no backfiring and the car performs as well on LPG as it does on unleaded. I also has a range of 1100km, because the petrol installation is retained.
The $35 million may well have been better spent on developing an Australian patented injection LPG system (see – http://www.lpgli.com/) and encouraging our local manufacturers to fit it to the otherwise excellent big cars that suit the distances and lifestyle Australians are fond of. LPG has a bad name because people associate it with taxis which generally use the 1970s technology cheap and cheerful mixer system. They stink, backfire, and run like hairy goats. Strangely, Ford persist in using this system in its factory Egas vehicles.
I reckon that’s a pretty sensible suggestion.