I wonder what disability the lady in the photo has?
Australia’s biggest fossil fuel subsidy is the Fuel Tax Credit Scheme, which cost the federal budget a staggering $10.8 billion in 2025-26. That’s more than is spent on the Australian Army.
The Fuel Tax Credit Scheme is basically a tax break for mining companies and other major users of diesel and petrol.
When you fill up your car with 50 litres of fuel, you pay 52c per litre in fuel tax, or $26 in total.
Many suburban families would do that every week, paying over $1,300 in fuel tax each year on the 2,600 litres of fuel they use.
By contrast, BHP uses nearly 1,300,000,000 litres of fuel each year and pays zero in fuel tax.
To be more accurate, BHP pays around $627 million in fuel tax that the government later pays back to BHP under the Fuel Tax Credit Scheme.
To summarise, suburban drivers pay $1,300 in fuel tax per year, while BHP pays nothing on over a billion of litres of the same fuel.
Off topic. This article is about too much subsidised fuel. It is not about comparing with the NDIS costs. It's saying that if there were less fuel subsidy there'd be more for the NDIS and I'd add other social and environmental investment needs.